Conjugated dendritic oligothiophenes for solution-processed bulk heterojunction solar cells

Abstract

This mini-review summarizes the recent achievements of developing conjugated dendritic oligothiophenes (DOT) for use in solution-processed bulk heterojunction (BHJ) solar cells. These DOTs are structurally defined molecules with relatively high molecular weight. Therefore, this novel class of thiophene based material possesses not only some advantages of oligomers, such as defined and monodispersed molecular structure, high chemical purity, but also some characteristics of polymers, for example, good solution-processability. In addition, the step-by-step approach of its synthesis allows precise functionalization of dendritic backbones with desired moieties, which is helpful to finely tune the optical and electronic properties of materials. Power conversion efficiencies (PCE) of BHJ solar cells were achieved up to 2.5% when functionalized thiophene dendrimers were used as electron donor and electron acceptor was a fullerene derivative. These results indicated that dendritic oligothiophenes are a novel class of the materials of electron donor for solution-processed organic solar cells.

Keywords

conjugated dendrimers / dendritic oligothiophenes (DOT) / organic semiconductors / bulk heterojunction (BHJ) solar cells

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