Non-Preheating Processed Quasi-2D Perovskites for Efficient and Stable Solar Cells

Small. 2020 Mar;16(11):e1906997. doi: 10.1002/smll.201906997. Epub 2020 Feb 21.

Abstract

Although the hot-casting (HC) technique is prevalent in developing preferred crystal orientation of quasi-2D perovskite films, the difficulty of accurately controlling the thermal homogeneity of substrate is unfavorable for the reproducibility of device fabrication. Herein, a facile and effective non-preheating (NP) film-casting method is proposed to realize highly oriented quasi-2D perovskite films by replacing the butylammonium (BA+ ) spacer partially with methylammonium (MA+ ) cation as (BA)2- x (MA)3+ x Pb4 I13 (x = 0, 0.2, 0.4, and 0.6). At the optimal x-value of 0.4, the resultant quasi-2D perovskite film possesses highly orientated crystals, associated with a dense morphology and uniform grain-size distribution. Consequently, the (BA)1.6 (MA)3.4 Pb4 I13 -based solar cells yield champion efficiencies of 15.44% with NP processing and 16.29% with HC processing, respectively. As expected, the HC-processed device shows a poor performance reproducibility compared with that of the NP film-casting method. Moreover, the unsealed device (x = 0.4) displays a better moisture stability with respect to the x = 0 stored in a 65% ± 5% relative humility chamber.

Keywords: crystal orientation; film casting; quasi-2D perovskites; solar cells.