A ladder-like dopant-free hole-transporting polymer for hysteresis-less, high-efficiency and high ambient stable perovskite solar cells.

Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have received high attention in the past few years due to their terrific photovoltaic performance and potentially low production cost. However, the use of hole transport materials (HTMs) with hygroscopic dopants, which cause the inevitable instability of device performance, has hampered commercialization. Herein, a dopant-free polymeric HTM with functional aromatic rings was used to optimize the HTM/perovskite interface and employed in a planar n-i-p configuration. Poly(1,4-(2,5-bis((2-butyloctyloxy)phenylene)-2,7-(5,5,10,10-tetrakis(4-hexylphenyl)-5,10-dihydro-s-indaceno[2,1-b:6,5-b ']dithiophene)) (IDTB) co-polymer constructed with indaceno[1,2-b:5,6-b ']dithiophene and bis(alkyloxy)benzene units adopts an S...O intramolecular bond linked ladder-like planar conjugated polymer backbone. Without any dopant, the hole mobility of IDTB is in the same order of magnitude as a doped 2,2 ',7,7 '-tetrakis[N,N-di(4-methoxyphenyl)amino]-9,9 '-spirobifluorene (spiro-OMeTAD). Also, the hydrophobic nature of IDTB facilitated the long-term stability of the perovskite underneath. The unencapsulated PSC devices made of IDTB-based HTM achieved a power conversion efficiency of 19.38 % with a high moisture stability, retaining above 80 % of initial power conversion efficiency at 65 % relative humidity for more than 10 days. The superior passivation effect to perovskite surface made a hysteresis of 0.44 % was almost the least reported for regular planar undoped polymer HTM PSCs.