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. 2023 Apr 19;13(1):6375.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-33147-6.

Understanding the impact of surface roughness: changing from FTO to ITO to PEN/ITO for flexible perovskite solar cells

Philippe Holzhey #  1 , Michael Prettl #  2 , Silvia Collavini  3 , Claudiu Mortan  2 , Michael Saliba  4   5
Affiliations

Understanding the impact of surface roughness: changing from FTO to ITO to PEN/ITO for flexible perovskite solar cells

Philippe Holzhey et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

So far, single-junction flexible PSCs have been lacking in efficiency compared to rigid PSCs. Recently, > 23% have been reported. We therefore focus on understanding the differences between rigid and flexible substrates. One often neglected parameter is the different surface roughness which directly affects the perovskite film formation. Therefore, we adjust the layer thickness of SnO2 and the perovskite layers. Furthermore, we introduce a PMMA layer between the perovskite and the hole transporting material (HTM), spiro-MeOTAD, to mitigate shunting pathways. In addition, the multication perovskite Rb0.02Cs0.05FA0.77MA0.16Pb(I0.83Br0.17)3 is employed, resulting in stabilized performances of 16% for a flexible ITO substrate and 19% on a rigid ITO substrate.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
SEM of the perovskite layer on substrates with different surface roughness. The grain size form of the perovskites correlates with the surface roughness of the substrate. (A) Perovskite on a smooth ITO substrate showing relative straight grains. (B) Perovskite on SnO2/FTO, the roughest substrate, with ca. 48 nm surface roughness showing less orientation orthogonal to the substrate. (C) Top-view SEM image of perovskites layers on ITO and on (D) FTO. Voids between crystals are more clearly pronounced on the ITO substrate.
Figure 2
Figure 2
(A) Thickness optimization of the SnO2 layer with at least 5 devices per thickness from 0 to 15 nm. We observe a decrease of reproducibility (out of 10 devices only 2 were working) for layer thicknesses less than 5 nm. (B) J-V curve of the best rigid cell on ITO with an additional thin PMMA layer between the perovskite and HTM. A stabilized PCE of 19.1% was achieved and 18.4% in the J-V scan. (C) J-V curve of the best flexible solar cell on PET/ITO with an additional thin PMMA layer. A stabilized PCE of 16.0% was achieved in the MPP measurement and 15.7% in the J-V scan. (D) Solar cell characteristics of 15 cells made on rigid and flexible ITO substrates.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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