Highly efficient all-inorganic perovskite solar cells with suppressed non-radiative recombination by a Lewis base

Jing Wang; Jie Zhang; Yingzhi Zhou; Hongbin Liu; Qifan Xue; Xiaosong Li; Chu-Chen Chueh; Hin-Lap Yip; Zonglong Zhu; Alex K Y Jen

doi:10.1038/s41467-019-13909-5

Highly efficient all-inorganic perovskite solar cells with suppressed non-radiative recombination by a Lewis base

Nat Commun. 2020 Jan 10;11(1):177. doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-13909-5.

Authors

Jing Wang¹, Jie Zhang¹, Yingzhi Zhou², Hongbin Liu³, Qifan Xue², Xiaosong Li³, Chu-Chen Chueh⁴, Hin-Lap Yip⁵, Zonglong Zhu⁶, Alex K Y Jen^{7

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Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry, City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, Hong Kong.
² Institute of Optoelectronic Materials and Devices, State Key Laboratory of Luminescent Materials and Devices, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China.
³ Department of Chemistry, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, 98195, USA.
⁴ Department of Chemical Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei, 10617, Taiwan.
⁵ Institute of Optoelectronic Materials and Devices, State Key Laboratory of Luminescent Materials and Devices, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China. [email protected].
⁶ Department of Chemistry, City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, Hong Kong. [email protected].
⁷ Department of Chemistry, City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, Hong Kong. [email protected].
⁸ Department of Chemistry, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, 98195, USA. [email protected].
⁹ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, Hong Kong. [email protected].

Abstract

All-inorganic perovskite solar cells (PVSCs) have drawn increasing attention because of their outstanding thermal stability. However, their performance is still inferior than the typical organic-inorganic counterparts, especially for the devices with p-i-n configuration. Herein, we successfully employ a Lewis base small molecule to passivate the inorganic perovskite film, and its derived PVSCs achieved a champion efficiency of 16.1% and a certificated efficiency of 15.6% with improved photostability, representing the most efficient inverted all-inorganic PVSCs to date. Our studies reveal that the nitrile (C-N) groups on the small molecule effectively reduce the trap density of the perovskite film and thus significantly suppresses the non-radiative recombination in the derived PVSC by passivating the Pb-exposed surface, resulting in an improved open-circuit voltage from 1.10 V to 1.16 V after passivation. This work provides an insight in the design of functional interlayers for improving efficiencies and stability of all-inorganic PVSCs.