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Seamless Interfacial Formation by Solution-Processed Amorphous Hydroxide Semiconductor for Highly Efficient Electron Transport

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journal contribution
posted on 2018-08-27, 00:00 authored by Shuzhang Yang, Xuezhi Song, Liguo Gao, Ning Wang, Xiaogang Ding, Shufeng Wang, Tingli Ma
Reducing the energy barriers for charge carrier injection, extraction, or transport within both electron- and hole-transporting interfaces is crucial for minimizing charge carrier transport losses in perovskite solar cells (PSCs). In this Article, an ultrafast, solution-processed hydroxide semiconductor material, called Nb­(OH)5, which has a similar energy band and transparency to its crystallization, Nb2O5, is first used as an electron transport layer (ESL) for PSCs. The conductivity of the Nb­(OH)5 is lower than that of Nb2O5; however, a power conversion efficiency (PCE) of approximately 13.62% is obtained by fully fabricating devices at room temperature with a MAPbI3 light absorption layer, which is almost the same as that of PSCs based on Nb2O5. The performance of the fabricated device shows that the Nb­(OH)5 film has seamless contact with the fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) substrate. The conductivity of the Nb2O5 film is 4 orders larger than that of Nb­(OH)5; however, a low interfacial barrier results in interfacial resistance between the Nb­(OH)5 and FTO substrate that is 3–4 orders lower than that of Nb2O5 due to universal quasi-ohmic contacts. By comparing with properties of PSCs with different ESLs (Nb­(OH)5 and Nb2O5), a further efficient electron extract principle from the perovskite layer to FTO substrate is promoted. The PCE of PSCs still needs to be improved further; however, this solution-processed hydroxide semiconductor material, Nb­(OH)5, has shown numerous benefits to PSCs with ultrafast process, low cost, and large-area fabrication.

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