Enantiopure versus Racemic Naphthalimide End-Capped Helicenic Non-fullerene Electron Acceptors: Impact on Organic Photovoltaics Performance

Pierre Josse; Ludovic Favereau; Chengshuo Shen; Sylvie Dabos-Seignon; Philippe Blanchard; Clément Cabanetos; Jeanne Crassous

doi:10.1002/chem.201701066

Enantiopure versus Racemic Naphthalimide End-Capped Helicenic Non-fullerene Electron Acceptors: Impact on Organic Photovoltaics Performance

Chemistry. 2017 May 5;23(26):6277-6281. doi: 10.1002/chem.201701066. Epub 2017 Apr 10.

Authors

Pierre Josse¹, Ludovic Favereau², Chengshuo Shen², Sylvie Dabos-Seignon¹, Philippe Blanchard¹, Clément Cabanetos¹, Jeanne Crassous²

Affiliations

¹ CNRS UMR 6200, MOLTECH-Anjou, University of Angers, 2 Bd. Lavoisier, 49045, Angers, France.
² Institut des Sciences Chimiques de Rennes UMR 6226, Institut de Physique de Rennes, UMR 6251, CNRS Université de Rennes 1, Campus de Beaulieu, 35042, Rennes Cedex, France.

PMID: 28301059
DOI: 10.1002/chem.201701066

Abstract

Impact of the enantiopurity on organic photovoltaics (OPV) performance was investigated through the synthesis of racemic and enantiomerically pure naphthalimide end-capped helicenes and their application as non-fullerene molecular electron acceptors in OPV devices. A very strong increase of the device performance was observed by simply switching from the racemic to the enantiopure forms of these π-helical non-fullerene acceptors with power conversion efficiencies jumping from 0.4 to about 2.0 % in air-processed poly(3-hexylthiophene)-based devices, thus highlighting the key role of enantiopurity in the photovoltaic properties.

Keywords: chirality; enantiopurity; helicene; non-fullerene; organic photovoltaics.