No abstract

Lead-free tin perovskite solar cells (PSCs) show the most promise to replace the more toxic lead-based perovskite solar cells. However, the efficiency is significantly less than that of lead-based PSCs as a result of low open-circuit voltage. This is due to the tendency of Sn2+ to oxidize into Sn4+ in the presence of air together with the formation of defects and traps caused by the fast crystallization of tin perovskite materials. Here, post-treatment of the tin perovskite layer with edamine Lewis base to suppress the recombination reaction in tin halide PSCs results in efficiencies higher than 10%, which is the highest reported efficiency to date for pure tin halide PSCs. The X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy data suggest that the recombination reaction originates from the nonstoichiometric Sn:I ratio rather than the Sn4+:Sn2+ ratio. The amine group in edamine bonded the undercoordinated tin, passivating the dangling bonds and defects, resulting in suppressed charge carrier recombination.

Lead-based perovskite solar cells have gained ground in recent years, showing efficiency as high as 20%, which is on par with that of silicon solar cells. However, the toxicity of lead makes it a nonideal candidate for use in solar cells. Alternatively, tin-based perovskites have been proposed because of their nontoxic nature and abundance. Unfortunately, these solar cells suffer from low efficiency and stability. Here, we propose a new type of perovskite material based on mixed tin and germanium. The material showed a band gap around 1.4-1.5 eV as measured from photoacoustic spectroscopy, which is ideal from the perspective of solar cells. In a solar cell device with inverted planar structure, pure tin perovskite solar cell showed a moderate efficiency of 3.31%. With 5% doping of germanium into the perovskite, the efficiency improved up to 4.48% (6.90% after 72 h) when measured in air without encapsulation.

According to the detailed balanced limit for a singlejunction solar cell, tin−lead (Sn−Pb) perovskite solar cells (PSCs) can achieve power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) more than Pb-PSCs. However, the rise in PCE of Sn−Pb PSCs is limited by the choice of hole transport layer to PEDOT:PSS only. Inspired by the use of hole selective monolayers (HSM) in Pb only PSCs, here, we employed 2-(9H-carbazol-9-yl) ethyl] phosphonic acid (2PACz), leading to PCE (21.39%) comparable to PSCs fabricated on conventional PEDOT:PSS (21.37%). Moreover, we reported a small molecule, methyl phosphonic acid (MPA), employing which an equipotential performance (PCE= 21.08%) was obtained owing to its passivation effect on the transparent conducting oxide (TCO) layer. Furthermore, by taking motivation from the idea of cosensitization in dye sensitized solar cells, we explored the point that the coabsorption of 2-(9H-carbazol-9-yl) ethyl] phosphonic acid (2PACz) and a small molecule MPA on TCO glass led to the Sn−Pb PSC (1.25 eV) with a PCE of 23.3% and open-circuit voltage of 0.88 V.

terms of employing the ideal bandgap absorber layer in PSC, the tin-lead (Sn-Pb) mixed PSCs are now getting attention with the additional benefit of utilizing them in tandem solar cell technology. [8][9][10] In recent years, various research groups have demonstrated power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) of more than 20% by employing Sn-Pb PSCs. [9,[11][12][13][14] However, PCE of Sn-Pb mixed PSCs is still lagging behind their Pb counterparts, especially in terms of open-circuit voltage (V oc ) loss, which is conventionally described as the deficit from the bandgap, is less than 0.3 V for the efficient Pb-PSCs. [4][5][6] Therefore, in the recent past, the efforts are directed toward finding the solutions to overcome the V oc loss. Researchers around the world are trying to address the problem by solving the issues related to the physical properties of the Sn-Pb perovskite films such as short carrier lifetime, [12] large Urbach energy, [11] high trap density, and most importantly the rapid oxidation of Sn 2+ to Sn 4+ . [9,13,14] The focus has been on improving the physical properties by employing different thin film formation strategies. Tong et al., [12] demonstrated the drastic improvement in optoelectronic properties such as the increase in carrier lifetime of more than 1 µs and carrier diffusion length of longer than 1 µm with the incorporation of bulky guanidinium thiocyanate (GuaSCN) into the perovskite films that led to the first research report of more than 20% PCE in Sn-Pb PSCs with a V oc loss of 0.42 V. The increase in PSC performance is assigned to the passivation by the formation of a 2D structure at the grain boundaries that also suppresses the formation of Sn vacancies. This kind of improvement in solar cell performance is the same observation as reported in the case of pure Pb-containing PSCs. [15] Our group also showed the effect of the decrease in trap densities, at the surface and bulk, by using strain engineering, steering to the PCE of 20.4%, and V oc loss of less than 0.50 V. [11] Recently, Li et al., [16] also demonstrated the importance of surface and grain boundary passivation by the formation of 1D pyrrolidine perovskite, a V oc loss of 0.41 V is reported. Lin et al., [9] addressed the oxidation problem in Sn-Pb precursor solution. The Sn metal is introduced as a reducing agent in precursor solution that decreased concentration of Sn 4+ (Sn 4+ + Sn→ 2Sn 2+ ) in the precursor solution before the film formation, Tin-lead perovskite solar cells (PSCs) show inferior power conversion efficiency (PCE) than their Pb counterparts mainly because of the higher open-circuit voltage (V oc ) loss. Here, it is revealed that the p-type surface of perovskite transforms to n-type, based on post-treatment by a Lewis base, ethylenediamine. This approach forms a graded band structure owing to the rise of the Fermi-energy level at the surface of the perovskite layer, and increases the built-in potential from 0.56 to 0.76 V, which increases the V oc by more than 100 mV. It is demonstrated that EDA can lower the ...