Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2014 Nov 7:4:6953.
doi: 10.1038/srep06953.

Planar heterojunction perovskite solar cells with superior reproducibility

Ye-Jin Jeon  1 , Sehyun Lee  1 , Rira Kang  1 , Jueng-Eun Kim  1 , Jun-Seok Yeo  1 , Seung-Hoon Lee  1 , Seok-Soon Kim  2 , Jin-Mun Yun  3 , Dong-Yu Kim  1
Affiliations

Planar heterojunction perovskite solar cells with superior reproducibility

Ye-Jin Jeon et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

Perovskite solar cells (PeSCs) have been considered one of the competitive next generation power sources. To date, light-to-electric conversion efficiencies have rapidly increased to over 10%, and further improvements are expected. However, the poor device reproducibility of PeSCs ascribed to their inhomogeneously covered film morphology has hindered their practical application. Here, we demonstrate high-performance PeSCs with superior reproducibility by introducing small amounts of N-cyclohexyl-2-pyrrolidone (CHP) as a morphology controller into N,N-dimethylformamide (DMF). As a result, highly homogeneous film morphology, similar to that achieved by vacuum-deposition methods, as well as a high PCE of 10% and an extremely small performance deviation within 0.14% were achieved. This study represents a method for realizing efficient and reproducible planar heterojunction (PHJ) PeSCs through morphology control, taking a major step forward in the low-cost and rapid production of PeSCs by solving one of the biggest problems of PHJ perovskite photovoltaic technology through a facile method.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Schematic illustration of the perovskite film formation.
(a) Illustration of the crystal structure of CH3NH3PbI3 perovskite and (b) chemical structures of DMF and CHP. Schematic illustration of perovskite film formation in (c) DMF only and in (d) a CHP additive system.
Figure 2
Figure 2. Thin-film topology characterization.
Top-view and cross-sectional SEM images of the CH3NH3PbI3 films (a) without and (b) with the use of the CHP additive as a morphology controller.
Figure 3
Figure 3. Characteristics of the CH3NH3PbI3 perovskite thin-film.
(a) XRD patterns and (b) UV-vis spectra of the CH3NH3PbI3 films processed with and without the use of the the CHP additive.
Figure 4
Figure 4. Schematics of the device, the photovoltaic performance and statistical analysis of the perovskite solar cells.
(a) Schematic device configuration of the CH3NH3PbI3-based perovskite solar cells and (b) the corresponding energy levels of each layer. The J-V curves of devices made (c) without and (d) with the use of the CHP additive. (e) Statistical analysis of the photovoltaic parameters of the CH3NH3PbI3 perovskite solar cells processed without and with the CHP additive. Note that top and bottom of the boxes is the 75–25 percentile and blue diamond symbols represent outliers in box plots.
Figure 5
Figure 5. Maximum PCE of perovskite solar cells with various additives.
Evaluation of photovoltaic performances without CHP (5.34%), with NMP (6.14%), with DMSO (7.81%), and with CHP (10.00%) from left to right.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Sariciftci N. S., Smilowitz L., Heeger A. J. & Wudl F. Photoinduced electron transfer from a conducting polymer to buckminsterfullerene. Science 258, 1474–1476 (1992). - PubMed
    1. Yu G., Gao J., Hemmelen J. C., Wudl F. & Heeger A. J. Polymer photovoltaic cells enhanced efficiencies via a network of internal donor-acceptor heterojucntions. Science 270, 1789–1791 (1995).
    1. Kim M. et al. Electrical performance of organic solar cells with additive-assisted vertical phase separation in the photoactive layer. Adv. Energy Mater. 4, 1300612 (2014).
    1. O'regan B. & Grfitzeli M. A low-cost, high-efficiency solar cell based on dye-sensitized. Nature 353, 737–740 (1991).
    1. Yella A. et al. Porphyrin-sensitized solar cells with cobalt (II/III)–based redox electrolyte exceed 12 percent efficiency. Science 334, 629–634 (2011). - PubMed

Publication types