We introduce thiazolo[5,4-d]thiazole (TT)-based
derivatives featuring carbazole, phenothiazine, or triphenylamine
donor units as hole-selective materials to enhance the performance
of wide-bandgap perovskite solar cells (PSCs). The optoelectronic
properties of the materials underwent thorough evaluation and were
substantially fine-tuned through deliberate molecular design. Time-of-flight
hole mobility TTs ranged from 4.33 × 10–5 to
1.63 × 10–3 cm2 V–1 s–1 (at an electric field of 1.6 × 105 V cm–1). Their ionization potentials ranged
from −4.93 to −5.59 eV. Using density functional theory
(DFT) calculations, it has been demonstrated that S0 → S1 transitions
in TTs with carbazolyl or ditert-butyl-phenothiazinyl
substituents are characterized by local excitation (LE). Mixed intramolecular
charge transfer (ICT) and LE occurred for compounds containing ditert-butyl carbazolyl-, dimethoxy carbazolyl-, or alkoxy-substituted
triphenylamino donor moieties. The selected derivatives of TT were
used for the preparation of hole-selective layers (HSL) in PSC with
the structure of glass/ITO/HSLs/Cs0.18FA0.82Pb(I0.8Br0.2)3/PEAI/PC61BM/BCP/Ag. The alkoxy-substituted triphenylamino containing TT (TTP-DPA) has been demonstrated to be an effective material
for HSL. Its layer also functioned well as an interlayer, improving
the surface of control HSL_2PACz (i.e., reducing the surface energy
of 2PACz from 66.9 to 52.4 mN m–1), thus enabling
precise control over perovskite growth energy level alignment and
carrier extraction/transportation at the hole-selecting contact of
PSCs. 2PACz/TTP-DPA-based devices showed an optimized
performance of 19.1 and 37.0% under 1-sun and 3000 K LED (1000 lx)
illuminations, respectively. These values represent improvements over
those achieved by bare 2PACz-based devices, which attained efficiencies
of 17.4 and 32.2%, respectively. These findings highlight the promising
potential of TTs for the enhancement of the efficiencies of PSCs.