Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) are being explored extensively as renewable energy technologies because of their enormous structural flexibility and outstanding photoelectrochemical properties. Recently, PSCs have attracted much attention from researchers in the area of photovoltaic technologies, resulting in the preparation of hundreds of hole transporting materials (HTMs). The HTM play a significant role in regenerating the oxidized states of the light absorbers and conducting holes in an efficient manner to prohibit the charge recombination. Various HTMs have been investigated in combination with perovskite absorbers ranging from classical semiconducting polymers to small molecules. In order to promote the perovskite solar cells commercialized, development of less expensive and efficient HTMs is essential. In the course of our program to discover novel HTMs, we have proposed the thieno-imidazole moiety to serve as the template for the new type of TI series of HTMs. Herein, we report a convergent route to synthesize compounds <b>TI101</b>-<b>103</b>. The cell based on these HTMs exhibited the ranges of efficiencies from 7.5% to 11.3% which are comparable to that (10.5% ) of the Spiro-OMeTAD, an effective small-molecule HTM for PSCs. Our finding will shed light on further exploration of thieno-imidazole HTMs and provides a new approach for future rational HTMs design for the application in PSCs. Furthermore, the hole transporting properties of these TI series might be further enriched by changing different electron withdrawing substituents to impact the polarity of these HTMs. Such molecular and energy-level engineering of the thieno-imidazole hole transporting materials to explore their roles in developing superior efficiency of PSCs are currently underway in our laboratory and will also be reported in the meeting.

Synthesis and characterization of new thieno-imidazole materials for perovskite solar cells

256th National Meeting (2018)

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