Molecular Engineering of Triphenylamine-Based Non-Fullerene Electron-Transport Materials for Efficient Rigid and Flexible Perovskite Solar Cells

There has been a growing interest in the design and synthesis of non-fullerene electron transport materials (ETMs) for perovskite solar cells (PSCs), which may overcome the drawbacks of traditional fullerene derivatives. In this work, a novel donor–acceptor (D–A) structured ETM termed TPA-3CN is presented by molecular engineering of triphenylamine (TPA) as the donor group and (3-cyano-4,5,5-trimethyl-2(5H)-furanylidene) malononitrile as the acceptor group. To further improve the electron mobility and conductivity and achieve excellent photovoltaic performance, a solution processable n-type dopant is introduced during the ETM spin-coating step. After device optimization, PSCs based on the doped TPA-3CN exhibit an impressive power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 19.2% with a negligible hysteresis. Benefitting from the low temperature and good solution processability of ETM TPA-3CN, it was further applied in flexible inverted PSCs and an impressive PCE of 13.2% was achieved, which is among the highest values reported for inverted flexible fullerene-free PSCs