Low-Temperature Deposited Highly Flexible In–Zn–V–O Transparent Conductive Electrode for Perovskite Solar Cells

Abstract

Inorganic–organic hybrid perovskite solar cells (PSCs) typically embrace Sn-doped In2O3 (ITO) and F-doped SnO2 (FTO) as transparent electrodes, which are rigid and brittle, retarding the commercialization of flexible PSCs (FPSCs). Here, we fabricated flexible amorphous transparent V-doped In–Zn–O (IZVO) thin films with varied concentrations of V atoms at room temperature. The impacts of V concentration on the chemical, electrical, and optical properties of IZVO thin films were thoroughly investigated. The incorporation of V into IZO was demonstrated to suppress the formation of oxygen vacancies and thus reduce the carrier concentration in IZO. The IZVO thin film affords the best electrode performance with an optimum V concentration of 0.46 atom %. In contrast to the conventional ITO transparent electrodes that require a high processing temperature, the amorphous transparent IZVO electrode deposited at a low temperature without any heating and postannealing process showed a low sheet resistance (∼22.6 Ω/□), high conductivity (∼2210 S/cm), high optical transmittance (∼88.8%), and in particular, excellent mechanical flexibility and fatigue robustness. Therefore, the amorphous transparent IZVO electrode-based perovskite solar cells (PSCs) showed superior performance (14.57%) compared to the amorphous ITO electrode-based PSCs (11.96%), due to the significantly improved short-circuit current density (JSC), open-circuit voltage (VOC), and fill factor (FF). Moreover, the IZVO electrode-based FPSC device retained 77% of its initial power conversion efficiency (PCE) after 100 bending cycles, while the PCE of the amorphous ITO electrode-based FPSC dropped by 80% after only 30 bending cycles. Combining the excellent mechanical flexibility and fatigue robustness, the flexible amorphous IZVO electrode shows great potential for highly efficient flexible photovoltaic applications.