Semi-Transparent Perovskite Solar Cells with ITO Directly Sputtered on Spiro-OMeTAD for Tandem Applications

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2019 Dec 11;11(49):45796-45804. doi: 10.1021/acsami.9b17241. Epub 2019 Nov 27.

Abstract

Perovskite silicon tandem solar cells have the potential to overcome the efficiency limit of single-junction solar cells. For both monolithic and mechanically stacked tandem devices, a semi-transparent perovskite top solar cell, including a transparent contact, is required. Usually, this contact consists of a metal oxide buffer layer and a sputtered transparent conductive oxide. In this work, semi-transparent perovskite solar cells in the regular n-i-p structure are presented with tin-doped indium oxide (ITO) directly sputtered on the hole conducting material Spiro-OMeTAD. ITO process parameters such as sputter power, temperature, and pressure in the chamber are systematically varied. While a low temperature of 50 °C is crucial for good device performance, a low sputter power has only a slight effect, and an increased chamber pressure has no influence on device performance. For the 5 × 5 mm2 perovskite cell with a planar front side, a 105 nm thick ITO layer with a sheet resistance of 44 Ω sq-1 allowing for the omission of grid fingers and a MgF2 antireflection coating are used to improve transmission into the solar cells. The best device achieved an efficiency of 14.8%, which would result in 24.2% in a four-terminal tandem configuration.

Keywords: perovskite silicon tandem solar cells; perovskite solar cells; process optimization; sputter process; tin-doped indium oxide.