Bulk Heterojunction Organic Photovoltaic Devices Using Dendrimers

A family of prototype ..pi..-conjugated dendrimers has been synthesized and incorporated into solution-processable organic photovoltaic (OPV) devices. Bulk heterojunction devices were fabricated by blending the dendrimers with a solubilized fullerene. The best of these initial devices, which were not optimized for morphology, exhibited external quantum efficiencies of 22% at peak wavelength. Itwas found that 3-arm dendrimers, when sufficiently soluble, yielded higher photocurrents than their 4-arm counterparts. This was attributed to better planarity and intermolecular alignment of the 3-arm version. Device efficiency was seen to increase with increasing arm length. A reduced-band gap dendrimer was synthesized by attaching electron-withdrawing groups onto the core to yield an opticalband gap of 1.82 eV.