Enhancing Thermal Stability of Perovskite Solar Cells through Thermal Transition and Thin Film Crystallization Engineering of Polymeric Hole Transport Layers

Authors

Sanggyun Kim, Georgia Institute of Technology
Sina Sabury, Georgia Institute of Technology
Carlo A. R. Perini, Georgia Institute of Technology
Tareq Hossain, University of KentuckyFollow
Augustine O. Yusuf, University of Kentucky
Xiangyu Xiao, Georgia Institute of Technology
Ruipeng Li, Brookhaven National Lab
Kenneth R. Graham, University of KentuckyFollow
John R. Reynolds, Georgia Institute of Technology
Juan-Pablo Correa-Baena, Georgia Institute of TechnologyFollow

Abstract

Organic hole transport layers (HTLs) have been known to be susceptible to thermal stress, leading to poor long- term stability in perovskite solar cells (PSCs). We synthesized three 2,5-dialkoxy-substituted, 1,4-bis(2-thienyl)phenylene (TPT)-based conjugated polymers (CPs) linked with thiophene-based (thiophene (T) and thienothiophene (TT)) comonomers and evaluated them as HTLs in n-i-p PSCs. TPT-T (MB/C6), which has branched 2- methylbutyl and linear hexyl (MB/C6) side chains, emerged as a promising HTL candidate, enabling power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) greater than 15%. In addition, PSCs with this HTL showed an improvement in long-term stability at elevated temperatures of 65 °C when compared to those with the state-of-art HTL, 2,2′,7,7′- tetrakis(N,N-p-dimethoxyphenylamino)-9,9′-spirobifluorene (spiro- OMeTAD). This improvement is ascribed to the lack of thermal transitions within the operational temperature range of PSCs for TPT-T (MB/C6), which is attributed to the relatively short branched side chains of this polymer. We propose that the elimination of thermal transitions below 200 °C leads to HTLs without cracking as-deposited and after conducting a stress test at 65 °C, which can serve as a new design guideline for HTL development.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

8-2024

Notes/Citation Information

© 2024 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.1021/acsenergylett.4c01546

Funding Information

This work is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Science, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Solar Energy Technologies Office, under Award No. DE-EE0009524, along with the Office of Naval Research (N00014-22-1-2185). This work was per- formed in part at the Georgia Tech Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology, a member of the National Nano- technology Coordinated Infrastructure (NNCI), which is supported by the National Science Foundation (ECCS- 2025462). S.K. acknowledges the Department of Education Graduate Assistance in Areas of National need (GAANN) program at Georgia Institute of Technology (Award No. P200A210037). This research used the CMS 11-BM beamline of the National Synchrotron Light Source II, a U.S. DOE Office of Science User Facility operated for the DOE Office of Science by Brookhaven National Laboratory under Contract DE-SC0012704. We thank Xiang Yu for fabricating PSCs with doped TPT-T (MB/C6).

Repository Citation

Kim, Sanggyun; Sabury, Sina; Perini, Carlo A. R.; Hossain, Tareq; Yusuf, Augustine O.; Xiao, Xiangyu; Li, Ruipeng; Graham, Kenneth R.; Reynolds, John R.; and Correa-Baena, Juan-Pablo, "Enhancing Thermal Stability of Perovskite Solar Cells through Thermal Transition and Thin Film Crystallization Engineering of Polymeric Hole Transport Layers" (2024). Chemical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications. 87.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/cme_facpub/87