Symmetry-Induced Orderly Assembly Achieving High-Performance Perylene Diimide-Based Nonfullerene Organic Solar Cells
Shangshang Chen, Dong Meng, Jiachen Huang, Ningning Liang, Yan Li, Feng Liu, He Yan, Zhaohui Wang
Abstract
Controllable assembly of organic semiconductors has opened an avenue for an in-depth perception of their structure–property relationships; however, a detailed investigation of their molecular controllability remains challenging. Discerning the assembly of organic semiconductors could enable the attainment of a significant improvement of performance. Here, we report the fabrication of efficient nonfullerene organic solar cells (OSCs) based on two isomeric perylene diimide (PDI)fused corannulene acceptors, namely, corannurylene pentapetalae (CRP). A single-crystal analysis demonstrated that differentially symmetric isomers such as CRP-1 and CRP-2 display various assembly framework structures. Both isomeric CRP acceptor-based solar cells showed excellent power conversion efficiencies matching a medium bandgap polymer donor (P3TEA). Compared with CRP-2, a high symmetry-induced orderly assembly endowed CRP-1 with a higher efficiency of 11.2%, which is the maximum performance of PDI-based OSCs reported to date. This study sheds light on designing high-performance organic semiconductors allowing for symmetric orderly assembly. © 2021 American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.