Zirconium Doping to Enable High-Efficiency and Stable CsPbI2Br All-Inorganic Perovskite Solar Cells

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2024 Jan 10;16(1):1217-1224. doi: 10.1021/acsami.3c14459. Epub 2024 Jan 2.

Abstract

All-inorganic wide-bandgap perovskite CsPbI2Br has attracted much attention because of its inherent thermal stability and ideal bandgap for the front subcell of tandem solar cells (TSCs). However, the low power conversion efficiency (PCE) and poor moisture stability of CsPbI2Br still restrict its future commercialization. Herein, zirconium tetrachloride (ZrCl4) was doped into CsPbI2Br films to modulate the crystal growth and improve the film quality. The partial substitution of the B-site Pb2+ of CsPbI2Br with Zr4+ suppresses the unwanted phase conversion from the crystallized black α-phase to the δ-phase, resulting in improved phase stability. Consequently, the humidity and thermal stability of the film are greatly improved. Additionally, the incorporation of ZrCl4 suppresses nonradiative recombination and forms a matched energy-level alignment with the hole-transport layer (Spiro-OMeTAD). Benefiting from these features, the ZrCl4-doped CsPbI2Br perovskite solar cell (PSC) shows an outstanding efficiency of 16.60% with a high open-circuit voltage of 1.29 V. The unencapsulated devices simultaneously show excellent humidity and thermal stability, retaining over 91% of PCEinitial after 1000 h of aging in ambient air conditions and 92% PCEinitial after 500 h of continuous heating at 85 °C in a nitrogen environment, respectively. Furthermore, ZrCl4-doped CsPbI2Br was employed as the front subcell of perovskite/organic TSCs and achieved a remarkable PCE of 19.42%, showing great potential for highly efficient and stable TSCs.

Keywords: B-site doping; CsPbI2Br; all-inorganic perovskite; power conversion efficiency; stability.