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Two novel low-cost fluorene-based hole transport materials (HTMs) HT1 and HT2 as alternatives to the expensive HTM Spiro-OMeTAD have been designed and synthesized for the application in perovskite solar cells (PSCs) and solid-state dye-sensitized solar cell (ssDSCs). The two HTMs were prepared through a facile two-step reaction from cheap starting material and with a total yield higher than 90%. These HTMs exhibit good solubility and charge-transport ability. PSCs based on HT2 achieved power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 18.04% under air conditions, which is comparable to that of the cell employing the commonly used Spiro-OMeTAD (18.27%), while HT1-based cell showed a slightly worse performance with a PCE of 17.18%. For ssDSCs, the HT2-based device yielded a PCE of 6.35%, which is also comparable to that of a cell fabricated based on Spiro-OMeTAD (6.36%). We found that the larger …