Triisopropylsilylethynyl-Functionalized Anthracene-Based Hole Transport Materials for Efficient Hybrid Lead Halide Perovskite Solar Cells

Abstract

The development of hole transport materials (HTMs) is a prolific area of research due to the application of these materials in various technologies such as organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) or perovskite solar cells (PSCs). HTMs have notably played a crucial role in the development of high-performance PSCs since in these devices, they not only ensure the collection and transport of holes to the counterelectrode but also play an important role on the device stability. In addition to the need for these materials to have good transport properties and to be easy to process, it is also of paramount importance to guarantee that their synthesis costs are reduced to allow them to be used on a large scale. In this work, we show that the use of a 9,10-bis[(triisopropylsilyl)-ethynyl]anthracene (TIPS-anthracene) moiety as a π-conjugated core, in combination with electroactive arylamine moieties, allows us to obtain new efficient HTMs in only 2 or 4 steps after recrystallization. Solar cells fabricated with the hybrid perovskite (Cs0.05FA0.79MA0.16Pb(I0.84Br0.16)3 and these new HTMs exhibit power conversion efficiencies of up to 19.3% under AM1.5G solar illumination, which is close to the efficiency obtained with the reference compound 2,2′,7,7′-tetrakis(N,N-di-p-methoxyphenylamine)-9,9′-spirobifluorene (Spiro-OMeTAD) under the same conditions. Compared to other anthracene-based HTMs reported in recent years and used with perovskites of various compositions, our molecules, which are easy to prepare and purify, are more efficient.