Side-chain engineering on fluorene-based hole transport materials for low-cost perovskite solar cells with high stability

Abstract

This thesis aims to investigate the performance and the stability of standard n-i-p mesoscopic perovskite solar cells (PSCs) that employ novel organic hole transport materials (HTMs) with different side chains, such as carbazole (FL01) and triphenylamine (TPA) (FL02), as alternative to the commercially available Spiro-OMeTAD. The aim is to reduce the cost of the HTM while featuring good hole transport capability which, in turn, results in high performance and enhanced stability of the corresponding HTM-based PSCs. The comprehensive experimental characterizations carried out in the thesis reveal that the FL02 HTM-based PSCs display a high-power conversion efficiency (PCE) of ~18 %, comparable to that of Spiro-OMeTAD HTM-based devices, and a significantly increased photostability in air. These results suggest the potential of this novel design to replace the traditional costly and poorly stable HTMs.