Atmospheric effects on the photovoltaic performance of hybrid perovskite solar cells
Type
ArticleAuthors
Sheikh, Arif D.
Bera, Ashok

Haque, Mohammed
Baby, Rakhi Raghavan
Del Gobbo, Silvano
Alshareef, Husam N.

Wu, Tao

KAUST Department
Functional Nanomaterials and Devices Research GroupKAUST Solar Center (KSC)
Laboratory of Nano Oxides for Sustainable Energy
Material Science and Engineering Program
Physical Science and Engineering (PSE) Division
Date
2015-06Permanent link to this record
http://hdl.handle.net/10754/564176
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Organometal trihalide perovskite solar cells have recently attracted lots of attention in the photovoltaic community due to their escalating efficiency and solution processability. The most efficient organometallic mixed-halide sensitized solar cells often employ 2,2′7,7′-tetrakis-(N,N-di-p-methoxyphenyl-amine)-9,9′-spirobifluorene (spiro-MeOTAD) as the hole-transporting material. In this work, we investigated the effect of different atmospheric storage conditions, particularly vacuum, dry nitrogen, and dry air, on the photovoltaic performance of TiO2-CH3NH3PbI3-xClx-spiro-MeOTAD solar cells. We found that spin coating of spiro-MeOTAD in an oxygen atmosphere alone was not adequate to functionalize its hole-transport property completely, and our systematic experiments revealed that the device efficiency depends on the ambient atmospheric conditions during the drying process of spiro-MeOTAD. Complementary incident photon to current conversion efficiency (IPCE), light absorption and photoluminescence quenching measurements allowed us to attribute the atmosphere-dependent efficiency to the improved electronic characteristics of the solar cells. Furthermore, our Fourier transform infrared and electrical impedance measurements unambiguously detected modifications in the spiro-MeOTAD after the drying processes in different gas environments. Our findings demonstrate that proper oxidization and p-doping in functionalizing spiro-MeOTAD play a very critical role in determining device performance. These findings will facilitate the search for alternative hole-transporting materials in high-performance perovskite solar cells with long-term stability.Citation
Sheikh, A. D., Bera, A., Haque, M. A., Rakhi, R. B., Gobbo, S. D., Alshareef, H. N., & Wu, T. (2015). Atmospheric effects on the photovoltaic performance of hybrid perovskite solar cells. Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells, 137, 6–14. doi:10.1016/j.solmat.2015.01.023Sponsors
The research reported in this publication was supported by King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST).Publisher
Elsevier BVae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1016/j.solmat.2015.01.023