Empirical evidence for identical band gaps in substituted C60 and C70 based fullerenes

Optical absorptance data, and a strong correlation between solar cell open circuit voltages and the ionization potentials of a wide range of differently substituted fullerene acceptors, are presented as empirical evidence for identical, or at least very similar, band gaps in all substituted C60 and C70 based fullerenes. Both the number and kind of substituents in this study are sufficiently varied to imply generality. While the band gaps of the fullerenes remain the same for all the different substitutions, their ionization potentials vary greatly in a span of more than 0.4 eV. The merits and drawbacks of using these results together with photoelectron based techniques to determine relative fullerene energy levels for, e.g., organic solar cell applications compared to more direct electrochemical methods are also discussed.