Two analogous dimer and tetramer compounds, SF-PDI2 and SF-PDI4, were designed, theoretically calculated, synthesized, and developed as electron acceptors for organic solar cells. The effects of the number of the electron deficient building blocks on the optical absorption, energy levels, charge transport, morphology, crystallinity, and photovoltaic performance of the molecules were investigated. In combination with two different donors, PTB7-Th and PffBT4T-2OD, the results showed that increasing the numbers of PDI building blocks is beneficial to photovoltaic performance and leads to efficiency over 5%. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.