A low-cost spiro[fluorene-9,9′-xanthene]-based hole transport material for highly efficient solid-state dye-sensitized solar cells and perovskite solar cells

Abstract

A low-cost spiro[fluorene-9,9′-xanthene] (SFX) based organic hole transport material (HTM) termed X60 was designed and synthesized using a two-step synthetic route. Devices with X60 as HTM showed high power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) amounting to 7.30% in solid-state dye-sensitized solar cells (ssDSCs) and 19.84% in perovskite solar cells (PSCs), under 100 mW cm⁻² AM1.5G solar illumination. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first example of an easily synthesized spiro-structured HTM that shows comparable performance with respect to the well-known HTM Spiro-OMeTAD in both ssDSCs and PSCs. Furthermore, the facile synthesis of X60 from commercially available starting materials makes this HTM very promising for large-scale industrial production in the future.