Issue 27, 2018

Low cost and stable quinoxaline-based hole-transporting materials with a D–A–D molecular configuration for efficient perovskite solar cells

Abstract

The use of expensive hole transporting materials (HTMs), such as spiro-OMeTAD, in perovskite solar cells (PSCs) is one of the critical bottlenecks to hinder their large-scale applications. Some low-cost alternatives have been developed by combining conjugated electron-rich cores with arylamine end-caps, usually in a donor–π spacer–donor (D–π–D) molecular configuration. However, incorporation of electron-rich cores can lead to undesirable up-shift in the HOMO energy level and low stability, and few of these new HTMs can outperform spiro-OMeTAD in terms of device efficiency. Given that electron-deficient units have shown many advantages in developing efficient and stable photovoltaic dyes and polymers, we herein present a couple of novel molecular quinoxaline-based HTMs (TQ1 and TQ2) with a donor–acceptor–donor (D–A–D) configuration, especially for rationally modulating the HOMO level, improving the stability and decreasing the cost. The TQ2-based PSCs exhibit a maximum efficiency of 19.62% (working area of 0.09 cm2), unprecedentedly outperforming that of spiro-OMeTAD (18.54%) under the same conditions. In comparison, TQ1 based devices only showed moderate efficiencies (14.27%). The differences in hole extraction and transportation between TQ1 and TQ2 are explored by photoluminescence quenching, mobility and conductivity tests, and single crystal analysis. The scaling-up of the TQ2 based device to 1.02 cm2 achieves a promising efficiency of 18.50%, indicative of high film uniformity and processing scalability. The significant cost advantage and excellent photovoltaic performance strongly indicate that the D–A–D featured TQ2 has great potential for future practical applications.

Graphical abstract: Low cost and stable quinoxaline-based hole-transporting materials with a D–A–D molecular configuration for efficient perovskite solar cells

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Edge Article
Submitted
13 Feb 2018
Accepted
13 Jun 2018
First published
13 Jun 2018
This article is Open Access

All publication charges for this article have been paid for by the Royal Society of Chemistry
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Chem. Sci., 2018,9, 5919-5928

Low cost and stable quinoxaline-based hole-transporting materials with a D–A–D molecular configuration for efficient perovskite solar cells

H. Zhang, Y. Wu, W. Zhang, E. Li, C. Shen, H. Jiang, H. Tian and W. Zhu, Chem. Sci., 2018, 9, 5919 DOI: 10.1039/C8SC00731D

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