Low-Temperature Presynthesized Crystalline Tin Oxide for Efficient Flexible Perovskite Solar Cells and Modules

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2018 May 2;10(17):14922-14929. doi: 10.1021/acsami.8b02624. Epub 2018 Apr 18.

Abstract

Organic-inorganic metal halide perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have been emerging as one of the most promising next generation photovoltaic technologies with a breakthrough power conversion efficiency (PCE) over 22%. However, aiming for commercialization, it still encounters challenges for the large-scale module fabrication, especially for flexible devices which have attracted intensive attention recently. Low-temperature processed high-performance electron-transporting layers (ETLs) are still difficult. Herein, we present a facile low-temperature synthesis of crystalline SnO2 nanocrystals (NCs) as efficient ETLs for flexible PSCs including modules. Through thermal and UV-ozone treatments of the SnO2 ETLs, the electron transporting resistance of the ETLs and the charge recombination at the interface of ETL/perovskite were decreased. Thus, the hysteresis-free highly efficient rigid and flexible PSCs were obtained with PCEs of 19.20 and 16.47%, respectively. Finally, a 5 × 5 cm2 flexible PSC module with a PCE of 12.31% (12.22% for forward scan and 12.40% for reverse scan) was fabricated with the optimized perovskite/ETL interface. Thus, employing presynthesized SnO2 NCs to fabricate ETLs has showed promising for future manufacturing.

Keywords: flexible perovskite solar cells; hysteresis; interface optimization; modules; tin oxide.