Abstract
Inkjet printing emerged as an alternative deposition method to spin coating in the field of perovskite solar cells (PSCs) with the potential of scalable, low-cost, and no-waste manufacturing. In this study, the materials TiO2, SrTiO3, and SnO2 were inkjet-printed as electron transport layers (ETLs), and the PSC performance based on these ETLs was optimized by adjusting the ink preparation methods and printing processes. For the mesoporous ETLs inkjet-printed from TiO2 and SrTiO3 nanoparticle inks, the selection of solvents for dispersing nanoparticles was found to be important and a cosolvent system is beneficial for the film formation. Meanwhile, to overcome the low current density and severe hysteresis in SrTiO3-based devices, mixed mesoporous SrTiO3/TiO2 ETLs were also investigated. In addition, inkjet-printed SnO2 thin films were fabricated by using a cosolvent system and the effect of the SnO2 ink concentrations on the device performance was investigated. In comparison with PSCs based on TiO2 and SrTiO3 ETLs, the SnO2-based devices offer an optimal power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 17.37% in combination with a low hysteresis. This work expands the range of suitable ETL materials for inkjet-printed PSCs and promotes the commercial applications of inkjet printing techniques in PSC manufacturing.
Highlights
Electron transport layers (ETLs), which effectively collect photo-generated electrons from the light-absorbing perovskite material and transport these electrons to the conductive contact layer, are critical for fabricating efficient perovskite solar cells (PSCs)
A bilayer ETL consisting of a compact TiO2 (c-TiO2 ) film and a mesoporous TiO2 layer is preferred for highly efficient PSCs [3,4]
We present inkjet printing processes for different ETLs for the application in PSCs by optimizing the ink design, the film uniformity and the device performance of devices based on these printed functional layers
Summary
Electron transport layers (ETLs), which effectively collect photo-generated electrons from the light-absorbing perovskite material and transport these electrons to the conductive contact layer, are critical for fabricating efficient perovskite solar cells (PSCs). A bilayer ETL consisting of a compact TiO2 (c-TiO2 ) film and a mesoporous TiO2 (mp-TiO2 ) layer is preferred for highly efficient PSCs [3,4]. Such a morphology was shown to offer a power conversion efficiency (PCE) exceeding 25% [5,6,7]. Much effort was devoted to overcoming these issues and to promoting the device performance to new levels by employing doping [10], graphene/TiO2 composites [11,12], surface passivation [13], and interface engineering [14,15], the phenomenon of scan-direction hysteresis when using TiO2 ETLs in PSCs is still difficult to suppress [16]. Investigation of alternative electron transport materials may be a more effective strategy than tedious optimization efforts involving TiO2
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