Effects of Alkyl Spacer Length in Carbazole-Based Self-Assembled Monolayer Materials on Molecular Conformation and Organic Solar Cell PerformanceShow others and affiliations
2025 (English)In: Advanced Science, E-ISSN 2198-3844, Vol. 12, no 4Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
Carbazole-based self-assembled monolayer (SAM) materials as hole transport layers (HTL) have led organic solar cells (OSCs) to state-of-the-art photovoltaic performance. Nonetheless, the impact of the alkyl spacer length of SAMs remains inadequately understood. To improve the knowledge, four dichloride-substituted carbazole-based SAMs (from 2Cl-2PACz to 2Cl-5PACz) with spacer lengths of 2-5 carbon atoms is developed. Single crystal analyses reveal that SAMs with shorter spacers exhibit stronger intermolecular interactions and denser packing. The molecular conformation of SAMs significantly impacts their molecular footprint and coverage on ITO. These factors result in the highest coverage of 2Cl-2PACz and the lowest coverage for 2Cl-3PACz on ITO. OSCs based on PM6:L8-BO with 2Cl-2PACz as HTL achieved high efficiencies of 18.95% and 18.62% with and without methanol rinsing of the ITO/SAMs anodes, corresponding to monolayer and multilayer structures, respectively. In contrast, OSCs utilizing the other SAMs showed decreased efficiencies as spacer length increased. The superior performance of 2Cl-2PACz can be attributed to its shorter spacer, which reduces series resistance, hole tunneling distance, and barrier. This work provides valuable insights into the design of SAMs for high-performance OSCs.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
John Wiley & Sons, 2025. Vol. 12, no 4
Keywords [en]
alkyl spacer length, intermolecular interaction, molecular conformation, self-assembled monolayer (SAM), single crystals
National Category
Theoretical Chemistry
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-555212DOI: 10.1002/advs.202410277ISI: 001369589300001PubMedID: 39629953Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85211171676OAI: oai:DiVA.org:uu-555212DiVA, id: diva2:1954236
Funder
Swedish Research Council, 2019-04683Swedish Research Council, 2020-05223Swedish Research Council, 2021-04798Swedish Research Council Formas, 2020-01201Swedish Research Council Formas, 2023-01008Swedish Energy Agency, P2021-90067Swedish Energy Agency, 2022-06725Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research, SIP21-0044EU, Horizon 2020EU, Horizon 2020Swedish Research Council2025-04-242025-04-242025-04-24Bibliographically approved