Efficient Perovskite Solar Cells Based on Tin Oxide Nanocrystals with Difunctional Modification

Abstract

Tin oxide (SnO₂ ) nanocrystals-based electron transport layer (ETL) has been widely used in perovskite solar cells due to its high charge mobility and suitable energy band alignment with perovskite, but the high surface trap density of SnO₂ nanocrystals harms the electron transfer and collection within device. Here, an effective method to achieve a low trap density and high electron mobility ETL based on SnO₂ nanocrystals by devising a difunctional additive of potassium trifluoroacetate (KTFA) is proposed. KTFA is added to the SnO₂ nanocrystals solution, in which trifluoroacetate ions could effectively passivate the oxygen vacancies (O_V ) in SnO₂ nanocrystals through binding of TFA^- and Sn⁴⁺ , thus reducing the traps of SnO₂ nanocrystals to boost the electrons collection in the solar cell. Furthermore, the conduction band of SnO₂ nanocrystals is shifted up by surface modification to close to that of perovskite, which facilitates electrons transfer because of the decreased energy barrier between ETL and perovskite layer. Benefiting from the decreased trap density and energy barrier, the perovskite solar cells exhibit a power conversion efficiency of 21.73% with negligible hysteresis.

Keywords: SnO 2 nanocrystals; electron transport layer; perovskite solar cells; potassium trifluoroacetate; surface modification of nanocrystals.