Low-Temperature (<40 °C) Atmospheric-Pressure Dielectric-Barrier-Discharge-Jet Treatment on Nickel Oxide for p-i-n Structure Perovskite Solar Cells

Jui-Hsuan Tsai; I-Chun Cheng; Cheng-Che Hsu; Jian-Zhang Chen

doi:10.1021/acsomega.0c00067

Low-Temperature (<40 °C) Atmospheric-Pressure Dielectric-Barrier-Discharge-Jet Treatment on Nickel Oxide for p-i-n Structure Perovskite Solar Cells

ACS Omega. 2020 Mar 10;5(11):6082-6089. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.0c00067. eCollection 2020 Mar 24.

Authors

Jui-Hsuan Tsai^{1

2}, I-Chun Cheng^{3

4}, Cheng-Che Hsu⁵, Jian-Zhang Chen^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Graduate Institute of Applied Mechanics, National Taiwan University, Taipei City 10617, Taiwan.
² Advanced Research Center for Green Materials Science and Technology, National Taiwan University, Taipei City 10617, Taiwan.
³ Graduate Institute of Photonics and Optoelectronics, National Taiwan University, Taipei City 10617, Taiwan.
⁴ Department of Electrical Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei City 10617, Taiwan.
⁵ Department of Chemical Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei City 10617, Taiwan.

Abstract

A scan-mode low-temperature (<40 °C) atmospheric-pressure helium (He) dielectric-barrier discharge jet (DBDjet) is applied to treat nickel oxide (NiO) thin films for p-i-n perovskite solar cells (PSCs). Reactive plasma species help reduce the trap density, improve the transmittance and wettability, and deepen the valence band maximum (VBM) level. A NiO surface with the lower trap density surface of NiO allows better interfacial contact with the MAPbI₃ layer and increases the carrier extraction capability. MAPbI₃ can better crystallize on a more hydrophilic NiO surface, thereby suppressing charge recombination from the grain boundary and the interface. Further, the deeper VBM allows better band alignment and reduces the probability of nonradiative recombination. NiO treatment using He DBDjet with a scan rate of 0.3 cm/s can improve PSC efficiency from 13.63 to 14.88%.