Wei-Hao ChiuAcademic Profile

International Journal Publication

High-performance perovskite solar cells based on dopant-free hole-transporting material fabricated by a thermal-assisted blade-coating method with efficiency exceeding 21%

Author affiliations and roles
  1. aDepartment of Chemical and Materials Engineering, Chang Gung University, Taoyuan 33302, Taiwan
  2. bDivision of Neonatology, Department of Pediatrics, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Linkou Taoyuan 33305, Taiwan
  3. cCenter for Green Technology, Chang Gung University, Taoyuan 33302, Taiwan
  4. dDepartment of Applied Chemistry, National Chiayi University, Chiayi 60004, Taiwan
  5. eDepartment of Chemistry, Soochow University, Taipei 11102, Taiwan
  6. fInstitute of Chemistry, Academia Sinica, Taipei 115024, Taiwan

Chemical Engineering Journal, 427, 131609 (2022).

Research topic: Hole-Transporting Materials

Abstract

As the performance in terms of efficiency and device stability of perovskite solar cells (PSCs) has made rapid progress in a short period of time, the upscaling of PSCs becomes an important issue for massive commercial applications, where the cost of device manufacturing is a determining factor for wide spread uses. Device fabrication by printing technique is one such low-cost process for large scale preparation. However, one of the reasons limiting the progress of a fully printed PSCs is the lack of appropriate hole-transporting materials (HTMs) that can be printed. Herein, a new donor-acceptor-donor (D-A-D) type hole-transporting material with 4-dicyanomethylene-4H-cyclopenta[2,1-b;3,4-b']dithiophene (diCN-CPDT) core tethered with two bis(alkoxy) diphenylaminocarbazole periphery groups, namely CB, was synthesized and applied as dopant-free HTM in fully printed PSCs by thermal-assisted blade-coating (TABC) method. The PSCs fabricated by fully scalable processes based on dopant-free CB as HTM exhibited an impressive power conversion efficiency (PCE) up to 21.09%, which is higher than that of devices with doped 2,2',7,7'-tetrakis-(N,N-di-p-methoxyphenylamine)9,9'-spirobifluorene (spiro-OMeTAD) (14.28%) under the same fabricating condition. Furthermore, the all TABC process is demonstrated to produce an area of 10 cm x 10 cm for the devices except for electrode with an average PCE of 19.68%. Additionally, the TABC-based dopant-free CB-based PSCs exhibited significantly improved long-term stability, retaining more than 94% PCE after 500 h compared to that using doped spiro-OMeTAD under a relative humidity of similar to 50%. This result demonstrated that the newly developed CB is a promising candidate HTM for high-performance fully printable PSCs.

Highlights

  • A new D-A-D type HTM with 4-dicyanomethylene-4H-cyclopenta[2,1-b;3,4-b’]dithiophene (diCN-CPDT) core.
  • High-quality perovskite and uniform HTM film was demonstrated by using thermal-assisted blade-coating deposition technique.
  • A fully scalable PSCs with dopant-free CB showed a better PCE (21.09%) than doped spiro-OMeTAD (14.28%).

Keywords

Dopant-free hole-transporting materialCyclopenta[2,1-b3,4-b '] dithiopheneFully printed perovskite solar cellThermal-assisted blade-coating
DOI ↗68 Google Scholar citations ↗63 OpenAlex citations ↗FWCI 3.38Top 6.4% normalized citations62 Crossref citations ↗43 Mendeley readers ↗

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