Modulating the strength of acceptor in D-A-D type hole transport materials for efficient inverted perovskite solar cells

Abstract

We report herein a design strategy to improve the hole mobility of D-A-D-based hole transport material (HTM) by modifying the accepting core of the reference HTMs based on triphenylamine (TPA) and bithieno thiophene (BTTI) units. Eight HTMs are designed by replacing the BTTI unit in BTTI-TPA HTM with several commonly available diones and imides as acceptors. The structural, electronic, optical, and charge transport properties are studied using density functional theory (DFT) and time-dependent DFT (TD-DFT) methods. The designed molecules are extensively examined for their structural, electronic, and absorption properties to extract the features that improve their hole mobility using the MPW1PW91/6–31 g(d,p) method. We identified four carefully designed BTTD-TPA, DBTT-TPA, NDTTI-TPA, and NDTI-TPA molecules as the most promising HTMs. This work exemplifies the role of the methyl group on electron acceptors on hole reorganization energies. Results obtained from this study provide valuable guidelines for designing efficient HTMs.