Designing New Indene-Fullerene Derivatives as Electron-Transporting Materials for Flexible Perovskite Solar Cells

Lukasz Przypis; Taimoor Ahmad; Kasjan Misztal; Damian Honisz; Eros Radicchi; Edoardo Mosconi; Wojciech Domagala; Filippo De Angelis; Konrad Wojciechowski

doi:10.1021/acs.jpcc.1c07189

Designing New Indene-Fullerene Derivatives as Electron-Transporting Materials for Flexible Perovskite Solar Cells

J Phys Chem C Nanomater Interfaces. 2021 Dec 16;125(49):27344-27353. doi: 10.1021/acs.jpcc.1c07189. Epub 2021 Dec 3.

Authors

Lukasz Przypis^{1

2}, Taimoor Ahmad^{3

4}, Kasjan Misztal¹, Damian Honisz⁵, Eros Radicchi^{6

7}, Edoardo Mosconi⁶, Wojciech Domagala⁵, Filippo De Angelis^{6

7

8

9}, Konrad Wojciechowski^{1

3}

Affiliations

¹ Saule Research Institute, Wroclaw Technology Park, 11 Dunska Street, Sigma Building, 54-130 Wrocław, Poland.
² Department of Organic Chemistry, Bioorganic Chemistry and Biotechnology, Silesian University of Technology, Bolesława Krzywoustego 4, 44-100 Gliwice, Poland.
³ Saule Technologies Ltd., Wroclaw Technology Park, 11 Dunska Street, Sigma Building, 54-130 Wrocław, Poland.
⁴ Department of Electronics Engineering, University of Rome "Tor Vergata", Via del Politecnico 1, 00133 Rome, Italy.
⁵ Department of Physical Chemistry and Technology of Polymers, Silesian University of Technology, Marcina Strzody 9, 44-100 Gliwice, Poland.
⁶ Computational Laboratory for Hybrid/Organic Photovoltaics (CLHYO), Istituto CNR di Scienze e Tecnologie Chimiche "Giulio Natta" (CNR-SCITEC), Via Elce di Sotto 8, 06123 Perugia, Italy.
⁷ Department of Chemistry, Biology and Biotechnology, University of Perugia, Via Elce di Sotto 8, 06123 Perugia, Italy.
⁸ CompuNet, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Via Morego 30, 16163 Genova, Italy.
⁹ Department of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering, Prince Mohammad Bin Fahd University, P.O. Box 1664, 31952 Al Khobar, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Abstract

The synthesis and characterization of a family of indene-C₆₀ adducts obtained via Diels-Alder cycloaddition [4 + 2] are reported. The new C₆₀ derivatives include indenes with a variety of functional groups. These adducts show lowest unoccupied molecular orbital energy levels to be at the right position to consider these compounds as electron-transporting materials for planar heterojunction perovskite solar cells. Selected derivatives were applied into inverted (p-i-n configuration) perovskite device architectures, fabricated on flexible polymer substrates, with large active areas (1 cm²). The highest power conversion efficiency, reaching 13.61%, was obtained for the 6'-acetamido-1',4'-dihydro-naphtho[2',3':1,2][5,6]fullerene-C₆₀ (NHAc-ICMA). Spectroscopic characterization was applied to visualize possible passivation effects of the perovskite's surface induced by these adducts.