Low-cost azomethine-based hole-tranporting material prepared in a simple condensation reaction for perovskite-based solar cells

Pablo Docampo^a, Thomas Bein^a, Michiel Petrus^a^,^b, Theo Dingemans^b

^aNovel Aerospace Materials, Delft University of Technology, Kluyverweg 1, Deft, 2629 HS, Netherlands

International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics
Proceedings of International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics 2015 (HOPV15)

Roma, Italy, 2015 May 11th - 13th

Organizer: Filippo De Angelis

Poster, Michiel Petrus, 095
Publication date: 5th February 2015

The efficiency of perovskite-based solar cells has increased rapidly in the last five years and is already comparable with current commercial technologies. Record efficiencies exceeding 20% have already been reported and further improvements are expected. Although the cost of the perovskite material itself is relatively low, state-of-the-art devices incorporate an expensive organic hole-conducting material, termed Spiro-OMeTAD. Even though this material is fully organic, the expensive starting materials, transition metal catalysts and inert reaction conditions required for the synthesis and extensive product purification make its production cost prohibitive for large area photovoltaics. Here, we have developed a small-molecule hole-transporting material using well known condensation chemistry to prepare a low-cost Spiro-OMeTAD alternative. Schiff base chemistry is a particularly attractive alternative for the preparation of conjugated organic materials,since the reaction can be performed at near ambient conditions and water is the only by-product. We prepared our azomethine-based hole transporter (-CH=N- also known as Schiff base) with a high yield through the reaction of an amine with a dialdehyde. The resulting product was purified by a simple and fast washing procedure. When applied to planar (NH₃CH₃)PbI₃ perovskite solar cells, we have obtained power conversion efficiencies of 11.0%, which is comparable to Spiro-OMeTAD (11.6%), with similar performance parameters. We believe that our simple and clean synthetic reaction offers a cost-effective route towards up-scalable hole-transporting materials without significant losses to the power conversion efficiency.

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