This group devotes to frontier research in the field of organic electronics through multidisciplinary approach of chemistry, materials science, energy and information. We design and synthesize novel high-performance conjugated organics and polymers, especially n-type semiconductors. We explore applications of these new materials in renewable energy and information technology, especially fabrication of organic solar cells, perovskite solar cells and photodetectors.

Classical fullerene acceptors suffer from several insufficiencies, including weak absorption in the visible spectral region, limited variability of electronic properties and morphology instability, and are a bottleneck restricting sustainable development of organic photovoltaics (OPV) field. The development of high-performance new electron acceptor materials is a big challenge. This group pioneered the exploration of novel non-fullerene acceptors in China in 2006. In 2015, we created fused-ring electron acceptors (FREAs) represented by the "star molecule" ITIC. The FREAs have broken the theoretical efficiency limit of traditional fullerene acceptors, marginalized the previously predominant fullerene acceptors, and are heralding a post-fullerene era for the OPV field. 350 research groups in more than 20 countries have widely used the FREAs in the fields of renewable energy technologies (e.g., organic solar cells, perovskite solar cells, quantum dot solar cells and solar water splitting), information technologies (e.g., photodetectors, transistors, light-emitting diodes and nonlinear optics) and health care (e.g., photothermal and photodynamic therapeutics and diagnostics).