Proceedings of Perovskite Thin Film Photovoltaics (ABXPV)
Publication date: 14th December 2015
Several components of the hybrid perovskite-based solar cell are very similar to essential elements of the dye-sensitized solar cell, including a thin, compact blocking layer and a mesoporous, nanostructured metal oxide film as scaffold and substrate. However, the design rules are somewhat different, in particular, the thickness of both films, and the porosity and optimal particle and pore sizes of the nanostructured film.
In this contribution, we focus on the preparation and characterization of compact TiO2 blocking layers by several techniques, including spin coating, spray pyrolysis, dip coating and sputtering. The compactness of the films was tested using both an electrochemical method and DSC fabrication and photovoltage decay measurements. In addition, we have deposited nanostructured, mesoporous films using a variety of recipes using screen printing and sputtering. It is shown that reactive sputtering of TiO2 is a suitable method for high quality compact layers, while sputtering of Ti followed by oxidation results in films that do not cover the FTO substrate grain boundaries, and thicker films are needed to obtain a compact film. It is also shown that bias-controlled reactive sputtering leads to nanostructured mesoporous films of high quality. Preliminary experimental results on hybrid perovskite-based solar cells based on these materials, using MAPbI3 and spiro-OMeTAD, illustrate the feasibility of sputtering-based solar cells.