Surface Engineering of TiO2 ETL for Highly Efficient and Hysteresis‐Less Planar Perovskite Solar Cell (21.4%) with Enhanced Open‐Circuit Voltage and Stability
Abstract
Interfacial studies and band alignment engineering on the electron transport layer (ETL) play a key role for fabrication of high‐performance perovskite solar cells (PSCs). Here, an amorphous layer of SnO 2 (a‐SnO 2 ) between the TiO 2 ETL and the perovskite absorber is inserted and the charge transport properties of the device are studied. The double‐layer structure of TiO 2 compact layer (c‐TiO 2 ) and a‐SnO 2 ETL leads to modification of interface energetics, resulting in improved charge collection and decreased carrier recombination in PSCs. The optimized device based on a‐SnO 2 /c‐TiO 2 ETL shows a maximum power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 21.4% as compared to 19.33% for c‐TiO 2 based device. Moreover, the modified device demonstrates a maximum open‐circuit voltage ( V oc ) of 1.223 V with 387 mV loss in potential, which is among the highest reported value for PSCs with negligible hysteresis. The stability results show that the device on c‐TiO 2 /a‐SnO 2 retains about 91% of its initial PCE value after 500 h light illumination, which is higher than pure c‐TiO 2 (67%) based devices. Interestingly, using a‐SnO 2 /c‐TiO 2 ETL the PCE loss was only 10% of initial value under continuous UV light illumination after 30 h, which is higher than that of c‐TiO 2 based device (28% PCE loss).
This work was sponsored by ENI S.p.A under the MITEI Solar Frontier Center. M.M.T. wants to thank Laboratory of Photonics and Interfaces (LPI) at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and School of Engineering at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology for their supports.