Thermal Evaporation–Oxidation Deposited Aluminum Oxide as an Interfacial Modifier to Improve the Performance and Stability of Zinc Oxide-Based Planar Perovskite Solar Cells

Abstract

The acid−base chemistry at the interface of zinc oxide (ZnO) and methylammonium lead tri-iodide (perovskite) leads to a proton transfer reaction that results in perovskite degradation. In perovskite solar cells (PSCs), this reaction produces low efficiency and reduces the long-term stability. In this work, an aluminum (Al) layer of 1−2 nm thickness is thermally evaporated on top of ZnO or Al 3+ -doped ZnO (ZnO:Al) thin films and then annealed at 450 °C for 30 min. Thermal annealing converts the surface aluminum film into a transparent and approximately 2 nm thick aluminum oxide (AlO x ) layer. Also, a larger concentration of oxygen vacancies is obtained by the annealing of Al and attributed to the diffusion of Al into the ZnO surface, and the ZnO underlayer results in a more conductive material. As a result, the chemical stability of perovskite coatings on top of AlO x -coated ZnO films is significantly enhanced, and the flat-band level of ZnO shifts 0.09 eV upwards, which improves the energetic level alignment in PSCs. This allows us to obtain ZnO:Al/AlO x -based planar PSCs that show a maximum efficiency of 16.56% with the perovskite layer prepared in ambient conditions under a relative humidity of 40−50%. After continuous illumination of about 30 min in air, ZnObased PSCs without AlO x layer retain only 34.5% of their original efficiency, whereas those with AlO x retain about 92.5%. It is demonstrated that thermal evaporation−oxidation is an efficient method to modify the surface properties of inorganic semiconductor thin films and improves both the performance and stability of PSCs.

Physicochemical Approaches for Thin Film Energy Storage Devices through PVD Techniques

“…Ziran Ye et al reported Ag film on the liquid surface by using thermal evaporation technique for Surface Enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) application [44]. Hailin Hu et al fabricated Zinc oxide thin film by using this method for Planar Perovskite Solar Cell application [45]. Author group reported V 2 O 5 thin film supercapacitor prepared by thermal evaporation technique [46].…”

Videojuego para la enseñanza de celdas solares: Diseño e integración al aula

“…Por tal razón hemos incluido datos reales de celdas solares de perovskita híbrida fabricadas en nuestro laboratorio como parte de los indicadores a evaluar en el videojuego. Esto incluye más de cien recetas usadas en preparación de celdas solares, las cuales resultan en eficiencias variables (Arias-Ramos et al, 2020;Corpus-Mendoza et al, 2018;García-Cerrillo et al, 2017;Moreno-Romero et al, 2019;Rodríguez-Castañeda et al, 2020). De esta forma, el jugador es libre de fabricar celdas con la estructura de su preferencia y de experimentar múltiples parámetros de fabricación correlacionados a resultados experimentales reales para ofrecer un aprendizaje significativo.…”

Influence of Al doping in zinc oxide electron transport layer for the degradation triple-cation-based organometal halide perovskite solar cells

“…However, the stability issue limits their practical application [ 11 ]. The presence of weak Pb-X bonds in PVT is the key factor for the degradation of the PVT layer under UV radiation, hot, and humid environments (X stands for Cl, Br, or I) [ 12 , 13 ]. The degradation of the PSCs can be alleviated via the formation of the high-quality PVT layer [ 14 ] as well as the selection of the charge transport layers.…”