Silicon and oxygen synergistic effects for the discovery of new high-performance nonfullerene acceptors
Ying Qin, Hui Chen, Jia Yao, Yue Zhou, Yongjoon Cho, Yulin Zhu, Beibei Qiu, Cheng‐Wei Ju, Zhiguo Zhang, Feng He, Changduk Yang, Yongfang Li, Dongbing Zhao
Abstract
In organic electronics, an aromatic fused ring is a basic unit that provides π-electrons to construct semiconductors and governs the device performance. The main challenge in developing new π-skeletons for tuning the material properties is the limitation of the available chemical approach. Herein, we successfully synthesize two pentacyclic siloxy-bridged π-conjugated isomers to investigate the synergistic effects of Si and O atoms on the geometric and electronic influence of π-units in organic electronics. Notably, the synthesis routes for both isomers possess several advantages over the previous approaches for delivering conventional aromatic fused-rings, such as environmentally benign tin-free synthesis and few synthetic steps. To explore their potential application as photovoltaic materials, two isomeric acceptor-donor-acceptor type acceptors based on these two isomers were developed, showing a decent device efficiency of 10%, which indicates the great potential of this SiO-bridged ladder-type unit for the development of new high-performance semiconductor materials.