Electron transport layers (ETL) based on tin(IV) oxide (SnO2) are recurrently employed in perovskite solar cells (PSCs) by many deposition techniques. Pulsed laser deposition (PLD) offers a few advantages for the fabrication of such layers, such as being compatible with large scale, patternable, and allowing deposition at fast rates. However, a precise understanding of how the deposition parameters can affect the SnO2 film, and as a consequence the solar cell performance, is needed. Herein, we use a PLD tool equipped with a droplet trap to minimize the number of excess particles (originated from debris) reaching the substrate, and we show how to control the PLD chamber pressure to obtain surfaces with very low roughness and how the concentration of oxygen in the background gas can affect the number of oxygen vacancies in the film. Using optimized deposition conditions, we obtained solar cells in the n-i-p configuration employing methylammonium lead iodide perovskite as the absorber layer with power conversion efficiencies exceeding 18% and identical performance to devices having the more typical atomic layer deposited SnO2 ETL.
Keywords: electron transport layer; perovskite solar cell; pulsed laser deposition; tin(IV) oxide.