Application of novel low-cost and transparent hole conductors with long-term stability in ultrasonic spray deposited Sb 2 S 3 -based solar cells Sreekanth Mandati 1 , Atanas Katerski 1 , Nimish Juneja 1 , Aiste Jegrove 2 , Aivars Vembris 3 , Vytautas Getautis 2 , Tatjana Dedova 1 , Malle Krunks 1 , Nicolae Spalatu 1 , Matteo Chiesa 1 , Smagul Karazhanov 4 and Ilona Oja Acik 1 1 Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia, 2 Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania, 3 University of Latvia, Latvia, 4 Institute for Energy Technology (IFE), Norway Photovoltaic (PV) solar energy conversion is one of the leading technologies to meet present days’ energy demand and it is a green process, which is an important step towards pollution-free energy production. Among various applications of PV, building integrated PV is a major area wherein the solar cells are generally incorporated as windows and are required to be semi-transparent. In this scenario, efforts have been dedicated towards developing novel materials to obtain semi-transparent solar cells with reasonable efficiencies. It is also important to consider the costs associated with the materials and pertinent processes, materials abundance and their stability. Thin films solar cells based on Sb 2 S 3 are promising for semi-transparent applications owing to its superior optoelectronic properties, stability and availability of raw materials. However, though the transparency has been obtained in the absorber stage, the use of hole transport materials (HTM) like P3HT reduces the overall transparency of the solar cells while HTMs like Spiro-MeOTAD possess issues with long-term stability. Further, these conventionally used HTMs are very expensive to be considered for large scale manufacturing. In appreciation of the above, the present work proposes to explore novel, low-cost and transparent fluorene based thiophene containing HTMs for application in ultrasonic spray deposited Sb 2 S 3 solar cells. A series of HTMs like V808, V1385, and V1386, which particularly have better interaction with Sb 2 S 3 absorber are spin coated in the superstrate device configuration of Glass/FTO/TiO 2 /Sb 2 S 3 /HTM/Au wherein TiO 2 and Sb 2 S 3 are deposited using ultrasonic spray pyrolysis. Preliminary studies unveil the solar cells with novel HTM have yielded similar power conversion efficiencies compared to the ones with P3HT, indicating their efficacy. Further, the individual layer and device properties, and overall transparency of the solar cells stack are systematically characterized and the results will be discussed.
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