Royal Society of Chemistry, Energy & Environmental Science, 7(8), p. 1986-1991
DOI: 10.1039/c4ee03773a
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Developing cost-effective hole transporting materials (HTM) is one of the most immediate tasks for commercialization of perovskite solar cells. We report a new spiro-type 4,4',4'',4'''-(2H,2'H,4H,4'H-3,3'-spiro-bi[thieno[3,4-b][1,4]dioxepine]-6, 6',8,8'-tetrayl)tetrakis(N,N-bis(4-methoxyphenyl)aniline) (Spiro-OMeTABPDOT, PST1) as efficient hole transporting material for perovskite solar cell (PSC) that works efficiently even without cobalt dopant. The titled compound is obtained by employing facile synthetic routes and tend to crystalize in solid state. A preliminary X-ray diffraction study of PST1 revealed a unique quasi-spiro molecular configuration and found multiple CH/π and π−π intermolecular short contacts. For the first time, the crystal structure of 2,2’,7,7’-tetrakis(N,N’-di-p-methoxyphenylamine)-9,9’-spirobifluorene (Spiro-OMeTAD) is also studied for comparison. The device based on PST1 exhibited PCE of 13.44%, and a comparable 12.74% PCE was achieved with its undoped form, which paves the way for developing new low cost hole transporting materials as promising alternative to the widely employed Spiro-OMeTAD.