Date Available

12-7-2015

Year of Publication

2015

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

College

Arts and Sciences

Department/School/Program

Chemistry

First Advisor

Dr. John Anthony

Abstract

Anthradithiophene (ADT) derivatives have proven to be a front-runner in the world of small molecule semiconductors for organic electronics and optoelectronics. This is mainly due to the improved stability, easy tuning of chemical and physical properties, and impressive device performance that these molecules possess, especially in organic field effect transistors (OFET) and organic photovoltaics (OPV). The second chapter of this dissertation shows that reducing the amount of alkylsilylethynyl groups, used for functionalizing and solubilizing the ADT backbone, does alter the chemical, physical and crystallographic properties of ADTs. These changes offer the opportunity to study and observe different intermolecular interactions as well as monitoring their influence on sulfur scrambling in solid state. Additionally, from the early days ADTs and functionalized ADTs have been synthesized as isomeric mixtures. In chapter three, I demonstrate a new and simple method that can separate the syn and anti isomers of the F-TES-ADT and F-TEG-ADT chromatographically. The effects of isomeric purity on crystal packing and field effect transistor performance were studied extensively.

Chapter four of this dissertation reveals a new generation of acceptor (electron poor) ADT derivatives obtained by attaching cyanide as electron withdrawing group (EWG) to the ADT chromophore. An extensive study was conducted on CN-ADT (acceptor) molecules in small molecule (F-TES-ADT) donor/ small molecule (CN-ADT) acceptor binary BHJ blends as well as P3HT/CN-ADT/PCBM ternary BHJ blends. Photophysical studies of the Donor/ acceptor blends (interface, domains, and crystal orientation) were conducted to obtain a better understanding of the film morphology and its effect on solar cell performance.

Finally, the last part of the dissertation, Chapter five, focus on studying singlet fission in ADT derivatives, as well as the effect of varying the size of the alkylsilylethynyl functional group (used for solubilizing the ADT backbone) on altering the electronic couplings and how can that potentially affect the singlet fission rate in these molecules. We also tried to inspect the extent of the correlation between long-range order in crystal packing and singlet fission by monitoring singlet fission rate and efficiency for ADT derivatives with different thin film morphologies.

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