Proceedings of International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics (HOPV16)
Publication date: 28th March 2016
Perovskite solar cells in the so called inverted structure are investigated with growing interest in the last years because of its simple and low-temperature fabrication process and the reported decrease of the hysteresis compared to the standard architecture.
Aluminum is usually chosen as the back contact. However, the temperature during aluminum deposition has to be limited and / or an appropriate electron transport layer (or layers) has to be inserted between the aluminum and the perovskite to prevent a chemical reaction and a subsequent failure of the device.
We examine planar inverted perovskite solar cells with differently deposited aluminum back contacts: Besides the common thermal evaporation of aluminum we also investigated the deposition by e-beam and sputtering. Both alternatives enable a fast and "cool" deposition with a comparatively low heat input.
Our results show that the performances of the cells with e-beam or sputtered aluminum can be at the same level as the thermal evaporated references. A study of different ETL materials and thicknesses confirmed that an adequate ETL preventing a contact of aluminum with the perovskite layer is still an essential requirement for efficient solar cells. Our findings emphasize the fact that probable malfunctions are first of all caused by the element aluminum itself and are not obligatory related to the deposition method and conditions. Furthermore the industrially more relevant deposition techniques of e-beam evaporation and sputtering are also generally promising alternatives.