Efficient and Stable Perovskite Solar Cells Using Low-Cost Aniline-Based Enamine Hole-Transporting Materials

Metal-halide perovskites offer great potential to realize low-cost and flexible next-generation solar cells. Low-temperature-processed organic hole-transporting layers play an important role in advancing device efficiencies and stabilities. Inexpensive and stable hole-transporting materials (HTMs) are highly desirable toward the scaling up of perovskite solar cells (PSCs). Here, a new group of aniline-based enamine HTMs obtained via a one-step synthesis procedure is reported, without using a transition metal catalyst, from very common and inexpensive aniline precursors. This results in a material cost reduction to less than 1/5 of that for the archetypal spiro-OMeTAD. PSCs using an enamine V1091 HTM exhibit a champion power conversion efficiency of over 20%. Importantly, the unsealed devices with V1091 retain 96% of their original efficiency after storage in ambient air, with a relative humidity of 45% for over 800 h, while the devices fabricated using spiro-OMeTAD dropped down to 42% of their original efficiency after aging. Additionally, these materials can be processed via both solution and vacuum processes, which is believed to open up new possibilities for interlayers used in large-area all perovskite tandem cells, as well as many other optoelectronic device applications.