Proceedings of Perovskite Thin Film Photovoltaics (ABXPV)
Publication date: 14th December 2015
A careful choice of charge extraction layers seems inevitable for optimizing selective carrier transport throughout the device and reaching highest efficiencies in hybrid perovskite solar cells. Furthermore, the chemical and morphological structure of a substrate surface can influence the perovskite crystal grow on top of it, with significant effects on the resulting device characteristics. Generally, planar architectures seem to suffer more severely from photocurrent hysteresis and best performances are achieved on mesoporous scaffolds. It has though been shown, that an additional organic layer of PC60BM between an inorganic electron-selective contact and the active perovskite material can strongly reduce hysteresis effects in a planar solar cell architecture.[1]
Low-temperature charge extraction layers enable numerous applications on thermally limited substrates like flexible foils or silicon heterojunction (SHJ) solar cells which are used as bottom cells in monolithic perovskite/SHJ tandem devices, where temperatures above 200°C are detrimental for the SHJ passivation.[2]
Here, we fabricate planar perovskite solar cells with different organic and inorganic electron extraction layers which are entirely processed below 200 °C. By varying the hole blocking contact while keeping all other deposition steps unmodified, the influence of a specific interface material on the device characteristics is investigated. These investigations are complemented by scanning electron microscopy and steady-state PL measurements to examine the quality of the perovskite absorber layers, current-voltage analysis are used to reveal the electrical performances and photocurrent hysteresis of the different configurations. Comparing the results for several organic, inorganic and organic-inorganic bilayer electron-selective contacts gives insight into the electrical and morphological properties of the perovskite layers used in the particular structures. This indicates if PC60BM only or organic interfaces in general are able to reduce hysteresis effects of planar perovskite solar cells and potentially relate it to beneficial influences on the absorber quality.
[1] C. Tao, S. Neutzner, L. Colella, S. Marras, A. R. Srimath Kandada, M. Gandini, M. De Bastiani, G. Pace, L. Manna, M. Caironi, C. Bertarelli, and A. Petrozza, “17.6% stabilized efficiency in low-temperature processed planar perovskite solar cells,” Energy Environ. Sci., vol. 8, no. 8, pp. 2365–2370, 2015.
[2] S. Albrecht, M. Saliba, J. Pablo, C. Baena, F. Lang, L. Kegelmann, M. Mews, L. Steier, A. Abate, L. Korte, R. Schlatmann, M. Grätzel, and A. Hagfeldt, “Monolithic Perovskite / Silicon-Heterojunction Tandem Solar Cells Processed at Low Temperature,” pp. 1–30.