Figure 4 (a) Water and ethylene glycol (EG) contact angles of the neat PM6, Tz-H , and Tz-Cl surfaces. (b) GIWAXS patterns of PM6:Tz-H and PM6:Tz-Cl blend films and (c) the corresponding scattering profiles in the out-of-plane (solid line) and in-plane (dashed line) directions.
The bulk morphologies of blend films were investigated by transmission electron microscopy (TEM). It is obvious that the PM6:Tz-Clblend possessed a smaller domain size and nano-scale phase separation (Figure S3), which is well consistent with the results of surface energy. GIWAXS measurements were further utilized to investigate the morphological feature of the two blend films. As shown in Figure 4b, face-on and edge-on crystallites coexisted in the PM6:Tz-Hblend film, which is similar to the neat Tz-H film. Compared with the bimodal texture of the PM6:Tz-H blend film, the PM6:Tz-Cl blend film exhibited predominant face-on orientation, which is beneficial to the charge transport in vertical direction (Figure 4c). As discussed above, these morphological features indicated that the Tz-Cl -based blend film exhibited a more favorable morphology, which might be a crucial reason for achieving better photovoltaic performance.
Conclusions
In conclusion, the electron-deficient units, thiazole and 4-chlorothiazole, were employed to construct two NFREAs, Tz-H and Tz-Cl , respectively. Compared withTz-H , Tz-Cl possessed a highly-planar backbone, ascribed to the simultaneous incorporation of S···N and S···Cl NoCLs. The Tz-Cl -based device delivered a PCE of 11.10%, much higher than the Tz-H -based control device (6.41%), mainly due to more efficient exciton dissociation, better and more balanced carrier mobility, less charge recombination, and more favorable morphology. Thus, this work provides an effective strategy for designing high-planarity and low-cost NFREAs via the incorporation of multiple NoCLs.
Supporting Information
The supporting information for this article is available on the WWW under https://doi.org/10.1002/cjoc.2021xxxxx.
Acknowledgement
Z. Han and C. Li contributed equally to this work. The authors acknowledge the financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51925306, 52103352, and 52120105006), National Key R&D Program of China (2018FYA 0305800), Key Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDPB08-2), the Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDB28000000), the Youth Innovation Promotion Association of Chinese Academy of Sciences (2022165), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities. DFT results described in this report were obtained from the National Supercomputing Center in Shenzhen (Shenzhen Cloud Computing Center).
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