Issue 2, 2022

The impact of fluorine atoms on a triphenylamine-based dopant-free hole-selective layer for perovskite solar cells

Abstract

For industrial use, perovskite solar cells (PSCs) require long-term stability and a cost-effective hole-transport layer (HTL). The PSC stability can be substantially improved via the rational design of a dopant-free HTL that possesses inherent electrical merits. Further, through molecular engineering, via placing fluorinated arms on an established triphenylamine core, superior stability can be achieved using cost-effective precursors and easy synthesis routes. Here we developed a fluorinated triphenylamine-based HTL, probed its structural and electro-optical properties, and demonstrated the practical utility of the HTL in a PSC in its pristine form. The designed fluorinated HTL, called tri(3-fluoro-4-methoxy-N-(4-methoxyphenyl)aniline) triphenylamine (FOMePh), gave a high power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 17.08%, which exceeded that of doped Spiro-OMeTAD (16.9%) while consuming 2.3-times less material than Spiro-OMeTAD during PSC fabrication. We carried out synthetic cost analysis, and the cost of FOMePh was calculated to be €80.19 g−1 which is four-times lower than the cost of Spiro-OMeTAD. To investigate the impact of fluorine atoms, we synthesized molecules without fluorine atoms (OMePh). FOMePh and OMePh had hole mobilities of 5.9 × 10−4 and 3.59 × 10−5 cm2 V−1 s−1, which are on par with doped Spiro-OMeTAD. The photovoltaic parameters suggest that the performance of OMePh dropped due to its poor film formation abilities compared with FOMePh, and this has a bearing on the performance and reliability of PSCs.

Graphical abstract: The impact of fluorine atoms on a triphenylamine-based dopant-free hole-selective layer for perovskite solar cells

Associated articles

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
15 Oct 2021
Accepted
19 Nov 2021
First published
22 Nov 2021

J. Mater. Chem. C, 2022,10, 476-484

The impact of fluorine atoms on a triphenylamine-based dopant-free hole-selective layer for perovskite solar cells

A. Ghaderian, M. Pegu, N. H. Hemasiri, P. Huang, S. Ahmad and S. Kazim, J. Mater. Chem. C, 2022, 10, 476 DOI: 10.1039/D1TC04972K

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