Introducing Four 1,1-Dicyanomethylene-3-Indanone (IC) End-capped Groups as an Alternative Strategy for the Design of Small Molecular Nonfullerene Acceptors

摘要： Linear A-D-A or A-π-D-π-A architectures are predominant in the design of promising non-fullerene acceptors (NFAs), which promoted the rapid progress of organic solar cells (OSCs). However, utilization of four electron-accepting units (A) to construct four-armed NFAs is rarely reported and the relationship of structure-properties-performance is unclear. In this study, we designed and synthesized a novel acceptor (A401) with (AA)-π-D-π-(AA) configuration, where four 1,1-dicyanomethylene-3-indanone (IC) groups were used as the end-capped segments. When A401 was paired with a classic p-type polymer PBDB-T, a power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 7.54% could be achieved, which was much higher than that of the reported two-armed analogue of DC-IDT2T (3.93%). The improved photovoltaic performance of A401 should be ascribed to the high electron-affinity. Our results indicate introducing more end-capped electron-accepting units is a simple and effective alternative strategy for the design of promising NFAs. Our conceptualized molecular architecture will encourage further research of high-performance multi-armed NFAs.