Restricting lithium-ion migration via Lewis base groups in hole transporting materials for efficient and stable perovskite solar cells

Li-TFSI as an indispensable dopant for hole transporting materials (HTMs) suffers from inherent hydrophilicity and ion migration, which seriously damages the stability of perovskite solar cells (PSCs). Herein, a facile design strategy is proposed to restrict ion migration of Li+ by introducing different Lewis base groups (pyridine, 1,10phenanthroline and pyrazine) into HTMs. Owing to the coordination effect of Lewis base groups to Li+, the doped HTMs (Pyrd-TPA, Phen-TPA and Pyra-TPA) exhibit significantly enhanced conjugation and hole mobility. Particularly, theoretical calculation and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) results demonstrate that Phen-TPA forms the strongest coordination with Li+ due to the most negative electrostatic potential region existing around 1,10-phenanthroline group. The generated Li+-coordinated Phen-TPA contributes to preferable energy levels, morphology uniformity and hydrophobicity. Element mapping analysis shows that Li-ion migration in doped Phen-TPA is restricted effectively. In addition, Phen-TPA can also passivate the perovskite surface defects dramatically, which facilitates more efficient charge transfer to hole transporting layer. Consequently, PSCs based on Phen-TPA achieve promising power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 20.02% with negligible hysteresis effect. More importantly, it maintains over 88% of the initial PCE after 1056 h storage in ambient condition of 40-60% RH and about 81% of the original efficiency after 264 h storage at 60-70?degrees C. This work systematically revealed the relation between coordination ability of HTMs and the performance of PSCs for the first time, which provides new design strategies to develop efficient and stable PSCs.

Automated summary

This study proposes a design strategy to restrict Li+ ion migration by introducing different Lewis base groups into hole transporting materials (HTMs). Phen-TPA-based perovskite solar cells (PSCs) achieve high efficiency and stability due to enhanced conjugation and hole mobility. This work provides new design strategies for efficient and stable PSCs.