Efficient star-shaped hole transporting materials with diphenylethenyl side arms for an efficient perovskite solar cell

Two symmetrical star-shaped hole transporting materials (HTMs), i.e.FA-MeOPh and TPA-MeOPh with a fused triphenylamine or triphenylamine core and diphenylethenyl side arms were synthesized. FA-MeOPh showed a strong molar absorption coefficient and a red-shifted absorption compared with TPA-MeOPh because of its planar configuration. The power conversion efficiency (PCE) of the perovskite solar cells based on FA-MeOPh and TPA-MeOPh is about 11.86% and 10.79%, in which the efficiency of former is comparable to that (12.75%) of spiro-OMeTAD based cell. The high photocurrent (18.39 mA cm−2) of FA-MeOPh based solar cell relative to TPA-MeOPh based one may be attributable to the enhanced absorption in the near-IR region for mp-TiO2/CH3NH3PbI3/HTM based cell. The high mobility and low series resistance of mp-TiO2/CH3NH3PbI3/FA-MeOPh based cell led to the high fill factor (0.698) of FA-MeOPh based solar cell relative to TPA-MeOPh based one (0.627). In addition, the FA-MeOPh based cell showed a relative stability under light soaking for 250 h. The high efficiency, relative stability, synthetically simple and inexpensive materials as the HTMs hold promise to replace the expensive spiro-OMeTAD.