Improved photovoltaic performance and robustness of all-polymer solar cells enabled by a polyfullerene guest acceptor.

Fullerene acceptors typically possess excellent electron-transporting properties and can work as guest components in ternary organic solar cells to enhance the charge extraction and efficiencies. However, conventional fullerene small molecules typically suffer from undesirable segregation and dimerization, thus limiting their applications in organic solar cells. Herein we report the use of a poly(fullerene-alt-xylene) acceptor (PFBO-C12) as guest component enables a significant efficiency increase from 16.9% for binary cells to 18.0% for ternary all-polymer solar cells. Ultrafast optic and optoelectronic studies unveil that PFBO-C12 can facilitate hole transfer and suppress charge recombination. Morphological investigations show that the ternary blends maintain a favorable morphology with high crystallinity and smaller domain size. Meanwhile, the introduction of PFBO-C12 reduces voltage loss and enables all-polymer solar cells with excellent light stability and mechanical durability in flexible devices. This work demonstrates that introducing polyfullerenes as guest components is an effective approach to achieving highly efficient ternary all-polymer solar cells with good stability and mechanical robustness.

Design of One-for-All Near-Infrared Aggregation-Induced Emission Nanoaggregates for Boosting Theranostic Efficacy.

Fluorescence-guided phototherapy, including photodynamic and photothermal therapy, is considered an emerging noninvasive strategy for cancer treatments. Organic molecules are promising theranostic agents because of their facile construction, simple modification, and good biocompatibility. Organic systems that integrated multifunctionalities in a single component and achieved high efficiency in both imaging and therapies are rarely reported as the inherently competitive energy relaxation pathways are hard to modulate, and fluorescence quenching occurs upon molecular aggregation. Herein, a versatile theranostic platform with near-infrared emission, high fluorescence quantum yield, robust reactive oxygen species production, and excellent photothermal conversion efficiency was developed based on an aggregation-induced emission luminogen, namely, TPA-TBT. In vivo studies revealed that the TPA-TBT nanoaggregates exhibit outstanding photodynamic and photothermal therapy efficacy to ablate tumors inoculated in a mouse model. This work offers a design strategy to develop one-for-all cancer theranostic agents by modulating and utilizing the relaxation energy of excitons in full.

High-Performance Inverted Perovskite Solar Devices Enabled by a Polyfullerene Electron Transporting Material.

Electron transporting materials (ETMs) play vital roles in determining the efficiency and stability of inverted perovskite solar cells. The widely used PCBM is prone to undesirable aggregation and migration in a cell, thus impairing device stability. In this work, we develop a new type of ETMs by polymerizing C60 fullerene with an aromantic linker unit. The resultant polyfullerene (PFBS-C12) not only maintains the good optoelectronic properties of fullerenes, but also can address the aforementioned aggregation problem of PCBM. The polyfullerene-based blade-coated cells exhibit a high efficiency of 23.2 % and good device stability that maintain 96 % of initial efficiency after >1300-hour light soaking. An aperture efficiency of 18.9 % is also achieved on a 53.6-cm2 perovskite mini-module. This work provides a new strategy for designing ETMs that retain the key figure-of-merits of conventional fullerene molecules and enable more stable perovskite solar devices simultaneously.

Boosting the Efficiency of Non-fullerene Organic Solar Cells via a Simple Cathode Modification Method.

This work demonstrates a simple yet effective method to significantly improve the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of highly efficient non-fullerene organic solar cells by mixing two electron transport materials. The new electron transport layer shows an energy level better aligned with the active layer and an improved morphology that could reduce the active layer-electrode contact. These improvements lead to enhanced charge extraction, better charge selectivity, suppressed exciton recombination, and finally a boosted PCE in the PM6:Y6-based solar cells. When applied in conjunction with the non-halogenated solvent-processed PM6:PY-IT-based active layer, the mixed ETL also gives rise to a leading result for binary all-polymer solar cells (PCE of >16%) with a concurrent increase in VOC, JSC, and FF.

Copper-Catalyzed Coupling Reaction of (Hetero)Aryl Chlorides and Amides.

Cu2O/N,N'-bis(thiophen-2-ylmethyl)oxalamide is established to be an effective catalyst system for Goldberg amidation with inferior reactive (hetero)aryl chlorides, which have not been efficiently documented by Cu-catalysis to date. The reaction is well liberalized toward a variety of functionalized (hetero)aryl chlorides and a wide range of aromatic and aliphatic primary amides in good to excellent yields. Furthermore, the arylation of lactams and oxazolidinones is achieved. The present catalytic system also accomplished an intramolecular cross-coupling product.

CuI/Oxalic Diamide Catalyzed Coupling Reaction of (Hetero)Aryl Chlorides and Amines.

A class of oxalic diamides are found to be effective ligands for promoting CuI-catalyzed aryl amination with less reactive (hetero)aryl chlorides. The reaction proceeds at 120 °C with K3PO4 as the base in DMSO to afford a wide range of (hetero)aryl amines in good to excellent yields. The bis(N-aryl) substituted oxalamides are superior ligands to N-aryl-N'-alkyl substituted or bis(N-alkyl) substituted oxalamides. Both the electronic nature and the steric property of the aromatic rings in ligands are important for their efficiency.