Additive Engineering to Grow Micron-Sized Grains for Stable High Efficiency Perovskite Solar Cells

A high-quality perovskite photoactive layer plays a crucial role in determining the device performance. An additive engineering strategy is introduced by utilizing different concentrations of N,1-diiodoformamidine (DIFA) in the perovskite precursor solution to essentially achieve high-quality monolayer-like perovskite films with enhanced crystallinity, hydrophobic property, smooth surface, and grain size up to nearly 3 µm, leading to significantly reduced grain boundaries, trap densities, and thus diminished hysteresis in the resultant perovskite solar cells (PSCs). The optimized devices with 2% DIFA additive show the best device performance with a significantly enhanced power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 21.22%, as compared to the control devices with the highest PCE of 19.07%. 2% DIFA modified devices show better stability than the control ones. Overall, the introduction of DIFA additive is demonstrated to be a facile approach to obtain high-efficiency, hysteresis-less, and simultaneously stable PSCs.