Acene

Abstract: Molecular order has proven to be a significant factor in the performance of devices based on organic semiconductors. Recent studies involving solubilized versus unsubstituted thiophene oligomers have demonstrated that modifications which increase orbital overlap in the solid state can improve device performance by more than an order of magnitude. 1 Similar studies on pentacene, a compound which has already demonstrated remarkable potential for device applications, 2 have also focused on maximizing orbital overlap by inducing order in films. 3 However, these pentacene studies have thus far relied on substrate modification, rather than on pentacene functionalization, 4 to achieve the desired goals. We report here the preparation of two functionalized pentacene derivatives, and the effect of this functionalization on both the solid-state ordering and the electronic properties of the resulting crystals. Our goal for a functionalized pentacene was two-fold: First, the substituents should impart solubility to the acene, to simplify purification and processing. Second, the substituents should induce some capability for self-assembly of the aromatic moieties into ﷿-stacked arrays to enhance intermolecular orbital overlap. We anticipated that both of these goals could be accomplished by exploiting a rigid spacer to hold the necessarily bulky solubilizing groups well away from the aromatic core, allowing the closest possible contact between the aromatic rings. 5 Our initial targets were the bis(triisopropylsilylethynyl)pentacenes 1 and 2. Both of these compounds are easily prepared in near quantitative yield in a one-pot reaction from 6,13-pentacenequinone and 5,14pentacenequinone, respectively. 6

Abstract: A series of two-dimensional (2D) hybrid organic–inorganic perovskite (HOIP) crystals, based on acene alkylamine cations (i.e., phenylmethylammonium (PMA), 2-phenylethylammonium (PEA), 1-(2-naphthyl)methanammonium (NMA), and 2-(2-naphthyl)ethanammonium (NEA)) and lead(II) halide (i.e., PbX42–, X = Cl, Br, and I) frameworks, and their corresponding thin films were fabricated and examined for structure–property relationship. Several new or redetermined crystal structures are reported, including those for (NEA)2PbI4, (NEA)2PbBr4, (NMA)2PbBr4, (PMA)2PbBr4, and (PEA)2PbI4. Non-centrosymmetric structures from among these 2D HOIPs were confirmed by piezoresponse force microscopy—especially noteworthy is the structure of (PMA)2PbBr4, which was previously reported as centrosymmetric. Examination of the impact of organic cation and inorganic layer choice on the exciton absorption/emission properties, among the set of compounds considered, reveals that perovskite layer distortion (i.e., Pb–I–Pb bond angle between adj...

Abstract: Singlet fission (SF) could dramatically increase the efficiency of organic solar cells by producing two triplet excitons from each absorbed photon. While this process has been known for decades, most descriptions have assumed the necessity of a charge-transfer intermediate. This ab initio study characterizes the low-lying excited states in acene molecular crystals in order to describe how SF occurs in a realistic crystal environment. Intermolecular interactions are shown to localize the initially delocalized bright state onto a pair of monomers. From this localized state, nonadiabatic coupling mediated by intermolecular motion between the optically allowed exciton and a dark multi-exciton state facilitates SF without the need for a nearby low-lying charge-transfer intermediate. An estimate of the crossing rate shows that this direct quantum mechanical process occurs in well under 1 ps in pentacene. In tetracene, the dark multi-exciton state is uphill from the lowest singlet excited state, resulting in a d...

Abstract: We present a detailed investigation of the acene series using high-level wavefunction theory. Our ab-initio Density Matrix Renormalization Group algorithm has enabled us to carry out Complete Active Space calculations on the acenes from napthalene to dodecacene correlating the full pi-valence space. While we find that the ground-state is a singlet for all chain-lengths, examination of several measures of radical character, including the natural orbitals, effective number of unpaired electrons, and various correlation functions, suggests that the longer acene ground-states are polyradical in nature.