Modification of a donor-acceptor photovoltaic polymer by integration of optoelectronic moieties into its side chains

•Integration of optoelectronic moieties into D-A copolymer side chains to modify its property is presented.•The hole mobility of PFDTBT is improved by integrating either single or dendritic carbazole units into its side chains.•Complicated photophysical and photochemical processes have been observed after such structural modification.•Polymer photovoltaic properties could be improved by such structural modification with appropriate optoelectronic moieties.

In this study, a strategy to modify photovoltaic properties of a known material by integrating certain optoelectronic moieties in its side chains has been described. Thus, a plenty of single and dendritic carbazole units were introduced into the side chains of poly(2,7-(9,9-dialkyl-fluorene)-alt-5,5′-(4,7-di-2-thienyl-2,1,3-benzothiadiazole)) (PFDTBT), a famous donor-acceptor alternative conjugated polymer, to see what and how they can change the latter optoelectronic properties. It was found that such modifications not only increase the polymer light-harvesting capabilities in the UV region, but also enhance hole mobility in the pure film state. Furthermore, complicated photophysical and photochemical processes, including energy transfer, electron transfer and site-isolation effect, were observed to take place between carbazole units and the PFDTBT conjugated backbone. These factors work comprehensively and finally improve the polymer photovoltaic properties when modified with single carbazole units, but deteriorate when modified with dendritic carbazole units.

Graphical abstractDownload full-size image