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Solvent engineering for high-performance inorganic–organic hybrid perovskite solar cells

Nature Materials volume 13, pages 897–903 (2014)Cite this article

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Abstract

Organolead trihalide perovskite materials have been successfully used as light absorbers in efficient photovoltaic cells. Two different cell structures, based on mesoscopic metal oxides and planar heterojunctions have already demonstrated very impressive advances in performance. Here, we report a bilayer architecture comprising the key features of mesoscopic and planar structures obtained by a fully solution-based process. We used CH3NH3 Pb(I1 − xBrx)3 (x = 0.1–0.15) as the absorbing layer and poly(triarylamine) as a hole-transporting material. The use of a mixed solvent of γ-butyrolactone and dimethylsulphoxide (DMSO) followed by toluene drop-casting leads to extremely uniform and dense perovskite layers via a CH3NH3I–PbI2–DMSO intermediate phase, and enables the fabrication of remarkably improved solar cells with a certified power-conversion efficiency of 16.2% and no hysteresis. These results provide important progress towards the understanding of the role of solution-processing in the realization of low-cost and highly efficient perovskite solar cells.

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Figure 1: Device architecture, scheme of solvent engineering process, and XRD of perovskite layer.
Figure 2: XRD and FTIR of the intermediate phase and scheme for the formation of perovskite material via the intermediate phase.
Figure 3: AFM and SEM images of a perovskite device.
Figure 4: Photovoltaic performance as a function of scan direction and mp-TiO2 layer thickness.
Figure 5: J–V and IPCE characteristics for the best cell, and its reproducibility.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Global Research Laboratory (GRL) Program, the Global Frontier R&D Program of the Center for Multiscale Energy System funded by the National Research Foundation in Korea, and by a grant from the KRICT 2020 Program for Future Technology of the Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology (KRICT), Republic of Korea.

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Author notes

  1. Nam Joong Jeon and Jun Hong Noh: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Advanced Materials, Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology, 141 Gajeong-Ro, Yuseong-Gu, Daejeon 305-600, Korea

    Nam Joong Jeon, Jun Hong Noh, Young Chan Kim, Woon Seok Yang, Seungchan Ryu & Sang Il Seok

  2. Department of Energy Science, 2066 Seoburo, Jangan-gu, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon 440-746, Republic of Korea

    Sang Il Seok

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  1. Nam Joong Jeon
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Contributions

N.J.J., J.H.N. and S.I.S. conceived the experiments, data analysis and interpretation. N.J.J., Y.C.K., W.S.Y., S.R. and J.H.N. performed the fabrication of devices, device performance measurements and characterization. N.J.J., S.R., Y.C.K. and W.S.Y. carried out the synthesis of materials for perovskites and S.I.S prepared TiO2 particles and pastes. The manuscript was written by S.I.S., J.H.N. and N.J.J. The project was planned, directed and supervised by S.I.S. All authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Sang Il Seok.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Jeon, N., Noh, J., Kim, Y. et al. Solvent engineering for high-performance inorganic–organic hybrid perovskite solar cells. Nature Mater 13, 897–903 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat4014

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