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RSC Advances: Paper
RSC Advances: Paper
PAPER
Qifan Xue, Zhicheng Hu, Chen Sun, Ziming Chen, Fei Huang,* Hin-Lap Yip*
and Yong Cao
A polymer with tailored chemical functionality was introduced as a processing additive to control the lm
formation of the CH3NH3PbI3 perovskite structure, leading to enhanced photovoltaic performance in a
PEDOT:PSS/perovskite/PCBM-based planar heterojunction solar cell under optimized conditions. By
adjusting the polymer doping content and the processing solvent, the grain size, lm coverage and the
optical properties of the perovskite lms can be eectively tuned. At optimized conditions, the planar
heterojunction solar cell composed of a thin layer of perovskitepolymer lm (50 nm) exhibits an
average PCE of 6.16% with a Voc of 1.04 V, a Jsc of 8.85 mA cm2 and a FF of 0.65, which are much
Received 3rd October 2014
Accepted 24th November 2014
higher than those of the control device with a pristine perovskite lm. The higher performance was
attributed to improved morphology and interfaces of the perovskitepolymer lms, which reduced the
undesired contact between PEDOT:PSS and PCBM and minimized the shunting paths in the device. In
DOI: 10.1039/c4ra11739e
addition, since the fabrication process for the perovskite solar cells can be performed at low
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temperature, exible cells built on plastic substrates can therefore be realized with a PCE of 4.35%.
Introduction
Solar cells based on organometal trihalide perovskites (e.g.
CH3NH3PbI3) as light absorbers are emerging as a low-cost and
high performance photovoltaic technology that may full the
requirements for large-scale deployment of solar energy. Over
the past few years, signicant progress has been made in
perovskite solar cells with power conversion eciencies (PCE)
improved dramatically from 3% to over 15%.111 Recent studies
revealed that organometal trihalide perovskites exhibit several
desired properties for photovoltaic applications including facile
tunable bandgaps,12,13 high absorption coecient,13 long
carrier-diusion lengths,14,15 high ambipolar mobilities and low
exciton binding energy,13 making them a very appealing class of
material for new generation photovoltaic technology.
The perovskite semiconductors can also be adopted in
various types of solar cell architectures including perovskitesensitized solar cells, meso-superstructured solar cells and
planar pin heterojunction solar cells.19 The latter is particularly attractive for potential commercialization due to the
simplicity of the device structure, the low-temperature solution
processability and the potential of large-scale manufacturing of
Institute of Polymer Optoelectronic Materials and Devices, State Key Laboratory of
Luminescent Materials and Devices, South China University of Technology,
Guangzhou 510640, P. R. China. E-mail: msangusyip@scut.edu.cn; msuang@scut.
edu.cn
Electronic supplementary
10.1039/c4ra11739e
information
(ESI)
available.
See
DOI:
RSC Advances
Paper
Experimental section
Published on 25 November 2014. Downloaded by Sungkyunkwan University on 30/05/2015 07:02:05.
Materials
Methylammonium iodide (CH3NH3I) was synthesized according to the reported procedure.5 To prepare the CH3NH3PbI3,
CH3NH3I and PbI2(Alfa Aesar) were mixed in DMF or g-butylactone (GBL) to form a 15 wt% solution at 60 C overnight while
being stirred in a glovebox with moisture and oxygen levels <1
ppm. Poly(2-ethyl-2-oxazoline) (PEOXA, M.W 50k) was
purchased from Alfa Aesar and used directly without further
purication. [6,6]-Phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PC61BM,
Luminescence Technology Corp.) was dissolved in chlorobenzene (CB, Sigma-Aldrich).
Device fabrication and characterization
Paper
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Paper
Voc (V)
0 wt% PEOXA
0.82 0.03 7.78 0.24
0.75 wt% PEOXA 0.64 0.01 4.46 0.11
1.5 wt% PEOXA 0.50 0.01 4.02 0.19
PCE(%)
Paper
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Fig. 3 (a) XRD patterns for CH3NH3PbI3PEOXA lms prepared from GBL on the glass/PEDOT:PSS substrate. (b) SEM images of the
CH3NH3PbI3PEOXA lms prepared from GBL on the ITO/PEDOT:PSS substrate. (c) AFM images and height prole for CH3NH3PbI3PEOXA lms
prepared from GBL with 0 wt% and 1.5 wt% PEOXA and CH3NH3PbI3-1.5 wt% PEOXA/PC61BM lm on ITO/PEDOT:PSS substrates. The scanning
size of all the images is 20 mm 20 mm.
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Paper
Table 2 The photovoltaic parameters of planar heterojunction solar cells based on the CH3NH3PbI3PEOXA composite lm prepared from GBL
with the dierent ratio of PEOXA (0 wt%, 1 wt%, 1.5 wt%, 3 wt%, 5 wt%, 7 wt%) from a batch of 40 devices
Voc (V)
0 wt% PEOXA
1 wt% PEOXA
1.5 wt% PEOXA
3 wt% PEOXA
5 wt% PEOXA
7 wt% PEOXA
0.68
0.90
1.04
1.08
1.09
0.98
0.02
0.03
0.03
0.01
0.01
0.03
FF (%)
PCE (%)
Rs (U cm2)
Rp (U cm2)
7.27
7.54
8.85
6.69
6.87
2.44
42.4 2.1
66.5 1.7
65.2 1.3
60.3 2.5
50.5 4.6
40.4 2.3
2.13
4.65
6.16
4.49
4.12
0.91
25
13
7
16
22
108
380 30
1024 32
1328 101
968 120
1205 301
1009 185
0.13
0.38
0.15
0.12
0.22
0.15
0.28
0.31
0.18
0.15
0.12
0.13
4
2
2
3
2
28
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Conclusions
A polymer additive with tailored chemical functionality was
introduced into the CH3NH3PbI3 perovskite structure for the
rst time to control the morphology, electrical and optical
properties of the perovskite lms. At optimized conditions, the
planar heterojunction solar cell composed of a thin layer of
perovskite lm (50 nm) exhibits a PCE 6.35% with a Voc of 1.07
V, a Jsc of 8.95 mA cm2 and a FF of 0.66, which outperformed
that of the devices with pristine perovskite lm. Since the
fabrication process for the perovskite solar cells can be performed at low temperature, exible cells built on plastic
substrates can therefore be realized with a PCE of 4.35%. We
believed that the feasibility of using a chemically tailored
additive to ne tune the properties of metallohalide perovskite
lms as demonstrated in this report provides a powerful means
and new concept to further improve the performance of
perovskite-based devices.
Acknowledgements
This work was nancially supported by the Ministry of Science
and Technology (no. 2014CB643505), the Natural Science
Foundation of China (no. 51323003 and 21125419), and the
Guangdong Natural Science Foundation (no. S2012030006232).
Paper
Paper
RSC Advances