Exploring the Charge-Transport and Optical Characteristics of Organic Doublet Radicals: A Theoretical and Experimental Study with Photovoltaic Applications

Herein, we present a series of stable radicals containing a trityl carbon-centered radical moiety exhibiting interesting properties. The radicals demonstrate the most blue-shifted anti-Kasha doublet emission reported so far with high color purity (full width at half-maximum of 46 nm) and relatively high photoluminescence quantum yields of deoxygenated toluene solutions reaching 31%. The stable radicals demonstrate equilibrated bipolar charge transport with charge mobility values reaching 10-4 cm2/V·s at high electric fields. The experimental results in combination with the results of TD-DFT calculations confirm that the blue emission of radicals violates the Kasha rule and originates from higher excited states, whereas the bipolar charge transport properties are found to stem from the particularity of radicals to involve the same molecular orbital(s) in electron and hole transport. The radicals act as the efficient materials for interlayers, passivating interfacial defects and enhancing charge extraction in PSCs. Consequently, this leads to outstanding performance of PSC, with power conversion efficiency surpassing 21%, accompanied by a remarkable increase in open-circuit voltage and exceptional stability.

Enhancement of Efficiency of Perovskite Solar Cells with Hole-Selective Layers of Rationally Designed Thiazolo[5,4-d]thiazole Derivatives

We introduce thiazolo[5,4-d]thiazole (TT)-based derivatives featuring carbazole, phenothiazine, or triphenylamine donor units as hole-selective materials to enhance the performance of wide-bandgap perovskite solar cells (PSCs). The optoelectronic properties of the materials underwent thorough evaluation and were substantially fine-tuned through deliberate molecular design. Time-of-flight hole mobility TTs ranged from 4.33 × 10-5 to 1.63 × 10-3 cm2 V-1 s-1 (at an electric field of 1.6 × 105 V cm-1). Their ionization potentials ranged from -4.93 to -5.59 eV. Using density functional theory (DFT) calculations, it has been demonstrated that S0 → S1 transitions in TTs with carbazolyl or ditert-butyl-phenothiazinyl substituents are characterized by local excitation (LE). Mixed intramolecular charge transfer (ICT) and LE occurred for compounds containing ditert-butyl carbazolyl-, dimethoxy carbazolyl-, or alkoxy-substituted triphenylamino donor moieties. The selected derivatives of TT were used for the preparation of hole-selective layers (HSL) in PSC with the structure of glass/ITO/HSLs/Cs0.18FA0.82Pb(I0.8Br0.2)3/PEAI/PC61BM/BCP/Ag. The alkoxy-substituted triphenylamino containing TT (TTP-DPA) has been demonstrated to be an effective material for HSL. Its layer also functioned well as an interlayer, improving the surface of control HSL_2PACz (i.e., reducing the surface energy of 2PACz from 66.9 to 52.4 mN m-1), thus enabling precise control over perovskite growth energy level alignment and carrier extraction/transportation at the hole-selecting contact of PSCs. 2PACz/TTP-DPA-based devices showed an optimized performance of 19.1 and 37.0% under 1-sun and 3000 K LED (1000 lx) illuminations, respectively. These values represent improvements over those achieved by bare 2PACz-based devices, which attained efficiencies of 17.4 and 32.2%, respectively. These findings highlight the promising potential of TTs for the enhancement of the efficiencies of PSCs.

GaIIItriarylcorroles with Push-Pull Substitutions: Synthesis, Electronic Structure and Biomedical Applications

Two A2B type H3corroles and two GaIIItriarylcorroles with carbazole substitutions at 10-positions were synthesized and characterized. An analysis of structure-property relationships of the corroles have been carried out by investigating...

Synthesis, Optical Properties, and Electrochemical Behavior of 5,10,15,20-Tetraaryl-5,15-diazaporphyrin-Amine Hybrids

This work reports a series of covalently linked hybrids comprising 5,10,15,20-tetraaryl-5,15-diazaporphyrinoids (M-TADAP; M = Ni, Zn, Cu) and amines. M-TADAP-amine hybrids were prepared via the metal-templated cyclization of the corresponding metal(II)-dipyrrin complexes and redox reactions on the DAP unit. In the UV/vis/near-IR absorption spectra of the hybrids containing an 18π-electron DAP ring, broad charge-transfer bands were observed, reflecting the electron-donating property of the para-aminophenyl groups and the electron-accepting property of the 18π TADAP dication. The electrochemical behavior of the M-TADAP-amine hybrids was strongly dependent on the structure of the peripheral amine units. Further electrochemical oxidation of the hybrids bearing N-Ph groups conceivably generated amine-centered radicals, which sequentially underwent irreversible coupling to form benzidine-linked M-TADAP polymer films. The Ni-TADAP-benzidine polymer exhibited the electric conductivity of 1×10^-3  S m^-1 .