Elsevier

Materials Letters

Volume 270, 1 July 2020, 127412
Materials Letters

Rapid fabrication of efficient P-type perovskite-sensitized solar cells using hot-air drying method

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matlet.2020.127412Get rights and content

Highlights

  • The first p-type CuO-based perovskite-sensitized solar cells was developed.

  • Hot-air drying method for the fabrication of perovskite sensitizer was presented.

  • The device worked well for indoor light harvesting and operation during cloudy condition.

Abstract

The successful development of organic-inorganic perovskite materials mainly based on CH3NH3PbI3 has improved the PCE of solar cells significantly and reduced the fabrication cost relatively. The majority of the researches focused on studying different ways of improving the performance and stability of perovskite devices with less attention paid to minimizing the time of fabrication. The reduction of fabrication time can simultaneously reduce the fabrication cost and boost the industrial manufacturing capability. In this work, we report a simple and rapid method of making CH3NH3PbI3 layer at ambient laboratory conditions and applying it for advancing the photon-to-electricity conversion efficiency of liquid-state CuO-based perovskite-sensitized solar cells. The whole fabrication process starting from electrodepositing CuO to sandwiching counter electrode entails less than 10 min and the device efficiency reaches up to 0.35% under one sun illumination.

Introduction

Organic-inorganic metal halide perovskite mainly based on CH3NH3PbI3 is an efficient light absorber capable of improving the PCE of solar cells and reduced the fabrication cost. Perovskite materials possess high carrier mobilities, large defect tolerance, tunable band gap, long diffusion length and low exciton binding energy [1], [2]. However, the standard fabrication procedure, where the CH3NH3PbI3 phase is usually formed by dissolving perovskite salts (CH3NH3I and PbI2) in a polar solvent before being spin coated and annealed on a substrate [3], [4], is slightly time-consuming and the process must be conducted in an inert atmosphere. Therefore, methods that utilize shorter fabrication time and capable for ambient air processing must be developed for commercialization purpose.

CH3NH3PbI3 can also be used to replace organic dye as sensitizer in liquid-state p-type dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) [5]. The development of p-type DSSCs, where the light absorbing material is sensitized on a photocathode, is very important for realising the production of highly efficient tandem solar cells. To date, one of the potential photocathodes for DSSCs is CuO because CuO is naturally abundant, cost-effective, non-toxic and highly conductive. Suzuki et al. were the first group that utilised CuO as photocathode sensitised with different dyes and obtained 0.3 mA cm−2, 0.115 V, 0.011% for Jsc, Voc and PCE, respectively [6]. Despite this success, the study on CuO-based DSSCs currently is very scarce and the recorded efficiency of the CuO-based devices hardly surpasses 0.2% [7]. Here, we report on the first development of liquid-state CuO-based perovskite-sensitized solar cells (PSCs). We also present a cheap, rapid hot-air drying method for making CH3NH3PbI3 films which enables complete fabrication of liquid-state PSCs in less than 10 min. This work is an extension from our previous report related to rapid fabrication of CuO by electrodeposition [8].

Section snippets

Experimental

FTO substrates (Pilkington, TEC 8) are cleaned successively using soapy water, 2-propanol, deionised water, acetone and ethanol, in ultrasonic bath for 10 min. The substrates were kept in ethanol prior to fabrication process. CuO was deposited on FTO substrates using a method reported by Sagu et al. [8]. Basically, CuO was electrodeposited from aqueous solution containing 25 mM CuSO4 at −1.5 V with respect to Ag/AgCl/3M KCl for 120 s, followed by washing with deionised water before annealing at

Results and discussion

The X-ray diffraction (XRD) pattern of CuO films deposited on FTO substrates with and without CH3NH3PbI3 sensitizer are shown in Fig. 1(a). Characteristic peaks at 35.7°, 38.8°, 54° corresponding to ( −1 1 1), (1 1 1) and (0 2 0) crystal planes, respectively, were detected. These peaks can be indexed to the monoclinic structure of CuO (JCPDS card No. 48-1548) [9]. With the help of Scherrer formula and the broadening of (1 1 1) diffraction peak, the crystallite size was estimated to be 32 nm.

Conclusion

We have developed a facile and rapid method for making CH3NH3PbI3 layer through hot-air dyring process and successfully applied it for sensitising CuO electrodes. This process consumed less than 10 min for complete assembly of the liquid-state CuO-based PSCs. The cell efficiency achieved 0.35% which could be due to the effective light absorption by perovskite material and the compatibility between CuO and perovskite as photocathode and sensitizer, respectively. We believe that this work will

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Hussain Alessa: Methodology, Investigation, Writing - original draft. Inzamam Nawas Nawas Mumthas: Formal analysis. Mohamad Firdaus Mohamad Noh: Writing - review & editing. Jagdeep Sagu: Methodology, Investigation. K.G.U. Wijayantha: Supervision, Resources. Mohd Asri Mat Teridi: Supervision, Conceptualization, Funding acquisition.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

Hussain Alessa would like to thank Umm Al-Qura University for the financial supports. Mohd Asri Mat Teridi would like to thank Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia for the financial supports through grant Dana Impak Perdana (DIP-2018-009).

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