Propeller-Shaped, Triarylamine-Rich, and Dopant-Free Hole-Transporting Materials for Efficient n–i–p Perovskite Solar Cells

By introducing six triarylamine groups to a hexaphenylbenzene (HPB) or a hexakis(2-thienyl)benzene (HTB) core, two propeller-shaped, triarylamine-rich, and low-cost hole-transporting materials (HTMs), which are termed as HPB-OMe and HTB-OMe, respectively, with considerable hole mobility, were obtained by easy synthetic routes. Solid-state planar perovskite CH3NH3PbI3 solar cells (PSCs) with two new HTMs showed high power conversion efficiencies (12.9% for HPB-OMe and 17.3% for HTB-OMe in forward scans) under standard 100 mW cm–2 AM 1.5G illumination without doping. A comparison of matched-degree of energy levels, hole-transporting ability, photovoltaic conversion efficiencies, and recombination of the two HTMs indicated that developing multi-triarylamine- and thiophene-rich molecules provides candidate and efficient dopant-free HTMs for PSCs