Copper‐Based Corrole as Thermally Stable Hole Transporting Material for Perovskite Photovoltaics

Abstract

Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) represent nowadays a promising starting point to develop a new efficient and low-cost photovoltaic technology due to the demonstrated power conversion efficiency (PCE) exceeding 25% on small area devices. However, best reported devices suffer from stability issue under real working conditions thus slowing down the race for the commercialization. In particular, the hole transporting material commonly employed in mesoscopic n-i-p PSCs (nip-mPSCs), namely spiro-OMeTAD, is strongly corrupted when subjected to temperatures above 70 °C due to intrinsic thermal instability and because of the dopant employed to improve the hole mobility. In this work, the novel use of a copper-based corrole as HTM is proposed to improve the device thermal stability of nip-mPSCs under prolonged 85 °C stress conditions. Corrole-based devices show remarkable PCE above 16% by retaining more than 65% of the initial PCE after 1000 h of thermal stress, while spiro-OMeTAD cells abruptly lose more than 60% after the first 40 h. Once scaled-up to large area modules, the proposed device structure can truly represent a possible way to pass thermal stress tests proposed by IEC-61646 standards and, not less importantly, the high temperature required by the lamination process for panel production.

Stability of Perovskite Solar Cells: Degradation Mechanisms and Remedies

“…Compositional engineering of the perovskite has primary importance (Kim et al, 2019a;Matsui et al, 2019). Several reports are available where highly stable devices are achieved by the modification of the charge-transporting layer or by modifying the interface by a stabilizing or hydrophobic material (Kim et al, 2019b;Lee et al, 2019;Agresti et al, 2020;Kim et al, 2020b;Kumar et al, 2020). Metal electrodes have been replaced by a carbon electrode that is water resistant and can improve stability (Wu et al, 2019c).…”

Ag/MgO Nanoparticles via Gas Aggregation Nanocluster Source for Perovskite Solar Cell Engineering

“…74000, Newport Corporation 1791 Deere Avenue Irvine, CA, USA) coupled with a xenon lamp (Oriel Apex, Newport Corporation 1791 Deere Avenue Irvine, CA, USA) and a source meter (Keithley, mod. 2420), controlled by a home-made LabVIEW program for acquiring spectra [ 65 ].…”

Intramolecular Electric Field Construction in Metal Phthalocyanine as Dopant‐Free Hole Transporting Material for Stable Perovskite Solar Cells with >21 % Efficiency

“…For instance, a series of soluble MPcs were prepared by adjusting the peripheral substituents to be easily coated on the substrates by the solution‐process method [32–34] . Due to the relatively poor conductivity of MPcs, the dopants of Li‐TFSI and tBP were still needed to enhance the performance of PSCs [35, 36] . Although the dopant‐free MPcs‐based PSCs had received a best efficiency up to 20 % by the further thermal treatment, [37] it is still a challenge to improve the conductivity of MPcs, further to fabricate the efficient PSCs.…”