Light-harvesting capabilities of low band gap donor-acceptor polymers
Journal article, 2014

A series of nine donor-acceptor polymers, including three new and six polymers from previous work, have been investigated experimentally and theoretically. The investigation focuses on narrow band gaps and strong absorptions of the polymers, where experimentally determined first peak absorption energies range from 1.8 to 2.3 eV, and peak absorption coefficients vary between 19-67 L g(-1) cm(-1). An overall assessment of each polymer's light-harvesting capability is made, and related to the chemical structure. Oligomer calculations using density functional theory are extrapolated to obtain size-converged polymer properties, and found to reproduce the experimental absorption trends well. Accurate theoretical predictions of absorption energies to within 0.06 eV of experiments, and absorption strength to within 12%, are obtained through the introduction of an empirical correction scheme. The computational and experimental results provide insight for the design of polymers with efficient absorption, concerning the intrinsic properties of the constituent units and the use of bulky side-groups.

Author

Svante Hedström

Lund University

Patrik Henriksson

Chalmers, Chemical and Biological Engineering, Polymer Technology

Ergang Wang

Chalmers, Chemical and Biological Engineering, Polymer Technology

Mats Andersson

Chalmers, Chemical and Biological Engineering, Polymer Technology

P. Persson

Lund University

Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics

1463-9076 (ISSN) 1463-9084 (eISSN)

Vol. 16 45 24853-24865

Subject Categories

Physical Chemistry

DOI

10.1039/c4cp03191a

More information

Latest update

3/14/2018