Proceedings of MATSUS Spring 2025 Conference (MATSUSSpring25)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.29363/nanoge.matsusspring.2025.533
Publication date: 16th December 2024
Control of the molecular configuration at the interface of an organic heterojunction is key to the development of efficient optoelectronic devices. Due to the difficulty in characterizing these buried and (likely) disordered heterointerfaces the interfacial structure in most systems remains a mystery. Here, we demonstrate a novel synthetic strategy to design and control model interfaces, allowing for their detailed study in isolation from the bulk material. This is achieved by the synthesis of a polymer in which a non-fullerene acceptor moiety is covalently bonded to a donor polymer backbone using dual alkyl chain links, constraining the acceptor and donor units in a ‘through space’ co-facial arrangement. The constrained geometry of acceptor relative to electron rich and poor moieties in the polymer backbone can be tuned to control the kinetics of charge separation and the energy of the resultant charge-transfer state giving unprecedented insight into factors that govern charge generation at organic heterojunctions.