A comprehensive optical and electrical study of unsymmetrical imine with four thiophene rings and their binary and ternary compositions with PTB7 and PC(70)BM towards organic photovoltaics

A new unsymmetrical imine with four thiophene rings was synthesized in a one-step reaction, starting from the commercially available and relatively inexpensive reagents. The obtained imine in the form of thin films exhibited photoluminescence properties in the 1.8–2.4 eV energy range and a photoluminescence lifetime of about 0.3 ns. The HOMO and LUMO levels of the imine determined by cyclic voltammetry were at about −5.19 eV and −3.05 eV, respectively. The density functional theory was applied to calculate the geometric and electronic structure of the imine. The UV-Vis spectra showed that the absorption range of the imine overlaps with that of PC(70)BM, and the absorption peak at the maximum of the imine at 424 nm is located between the two maxima at 404 nm and 461 nm of the fullerene derivative. The electron acceptor and donor activity of the imine was tested in the solar cell architecture: glass/ITO/PEDOT:PSS/active layer/In/Al. The best photovoltaic parameters, with very good reproducibility for each 8 pixels in the cell, were found for the active layer based on ternary mixture PTB7:PC(70)BM:imine at a weight ratio 8 : 13 : 1, with the power conversion efficiency of about 4%. The external quantum efficiency of devices with the imine was found to be about 40% at 3.3 eV. The thermal imaging together with the recorded current response at increasing potential showed that the presence of imine in the composition has a beneficial impact in terms of current flow stability at temperatures above 200 °C, compared to two component layers with the same imine as an additive.