Nanocrystalline Flash Annealed Nickel Oxide for Large Area Perovskite Solar Cells

Abstract

The industrialization of perovskite solar cells requires adequate materials and processes to make them economically viable and environmentally sustainable. Despite promising results in terms of power conversion efficiency and operational stability, several hole‐transport layers currently in use still need to prove their industrial feasibility. This work demonstrates the use of nanocrystalline nickel oxide produced through flash infrared annealing (FIRA), considerably reducing the materials cost, production time, energy, and the amount of solvents required for the hole transport layer. X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy reveals a better conversion to nickel oxide and a higher oxygen‐to‐nickel ratio for the FIRA films as compared to control annealing methods, resulting in higher device efficiency and operational stability. Planar inverted solar cells produced with triple cation perovskite absorber result in 16.7% power conversion efficiency for 1 cm2 devices, and 15.9% averaged over an area of 17 cm2.

Impact of hole-transport layer materials on the field-induced degradation of p-i-n perovskite solar cells

“…A set of the investigated HTMs (Fig. 1) included poly[bis(4-phenyl)(2,4,6-trimethylphenyl)amine] (PTAA), which was reported to improve photostability of PSCs, 33,34 poly(ethylene-3,4-dioxythiophene):polystyrenesulfonate (PEDOT:PSS), which was one of the first used hole-selective interlayers for p-i-n PSCs, 35 inorganic NiO x representing a widely used hole-transport material for scalable fabrication of PSCs, 36 and the PTAA/NiO x hybrid, which showed very promising performances in PSCs. 34,37,38 All our bias exposure and device characterization experiments were performed in the dark at room temperature inside a glovebox with a well-controlled anoxic atmosphere (O 2 , H 2 O <0.1 ppm) for establishing the effect of electric field on the HTM in the absence of any other internal (heat and light) or external (moisture and oxygen) stress factors.…”

Towards scalability: progress in metal oxide charge transport layers for large-area perovskite solar cells

“…4e). 59 The FIRA method promotes the generation of excess oxygen in NiO x , leading to an elevated O/Ni ratio. This technique significantly enhances conductivity compared with the traditional hotplate annealing process.…”

Ion-Beam Sputtering of NiOx Hole Transporting Layers for p–i–n Halide Perovskite Solar Cells

“…5 However, it is hard to completely avoid the use of physical (usually vacuum-based) processes in the full cycle of HP PV fabrication. The industrialization of the PSC's technology requires scalable and high-throughput approaches, which provides reduction of operational time and economy of materials (for example, flash infrared annealing (FIRA) 6 ). In general, HP-based solar cells are thin-film devices that consist of a submicron-thick perovskite absorber sandwiched between p-and n-type charge transporting layers.…”