Orthogonal Solubility in Fully Conjugated Donor-Acceptor Block Copolymers： Compatibilizers for Polymer/Fullerene Bulk-Heterojunction Solar Cells

• Published in: Chinese journal of polymer science Vol. 35; no. 2; pp. 207 - 218
• Main Authors: Wang, Shi-fan, Liu, Ya-nan, Yang, Jie, Tao, You-tian, Guo, Yan, Cao, Xu-dong, Zhang, Zhi-guo, Li, Yong-fang, Huang, Wei
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Beijing Chinese Chemical Society and Institute of Chemistry, CAS 01.02.2017; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Block copolymers; Characterization and Evaluation of Materials; Chemistry; Chemistry and Materials Science; Condensed Matter Physics; Energy gap; Industrial Chemistry/Chemical Engineering; Monomers; Phase separation; Polymer Sciences; Solar cells; Bulk heterojunction solar cells; Acceptor; Donor; Compatibilizer; Block copolymers
• ISSN: 0256-7679; 1439-6203
• DOI: 10.1007/s10118-017-1889-6

Donor-acceptor （D-A） type fully conjugated block copolymer systems have been rarely reported due to the challenges in synthetic approaches to prepare well-defined low-polydispersity products. In this work, fully conjugated block copolymers are synthesized in a one-pot reaction through Stille coupling polycondensation, by utilizing the end-functional polymer copolymerization method. End-functional P3HT are copolymerized with AA （2,7-dihromo-9-（heptadecan-9-yl）-9H- carbazole） and BB （4,7-bis（5-（trimethylstannyl）thiophen-2-yl）benzo[c][1,2,5]thiadiazole, TBT） type monomers, respectively. The orthogonal solubility between the very soluble P3HT donor and the insoluble PCDTBT acceptor block improves the purity of block copolymers as well as distinct nano-scale phase-separation compared with other reports on miscibility of donor and acceptor polymer block. Further purification via preparative GPC is carried out to remove the excess of unreacted P3HT and free PCDTBT as well as to achieve low polydispersity of block copolymers. The chemical structure of the P3HT- b-PCDTBT block copolymers are verified via IH-NMR, and further confirmed by FTIR spectra. The block copolymer shows broad absorption and moderate optical band gap of 1.8 eV. Furthermore, the fully conjugated block copolymer films exhibit significant fine structures, much smoother film morphology compared to P3HT/PCDTBT polymer blends. By adding a small amount of block copolymer P3HT-b-PCDTBT as a compatibilizer into the bulk-heterojunction of P3HT：PC61BM blends, polymer solar ceils with an 8% increase of short circuit current （Jse） and 10% increase of power conversion efficiency （PCE） are achieved owing to the improvement of the active-layer film morphology. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report on donor-acceptor type fully conjugated block copolymer as an effective ternary additive in polymer： fullerene bulk heterojunction solar cells.