A Universal Strategy of Perovskite Ink-Substrate Interaction to Overcome the Poor Wettability of a Self-Assembled Monolayer for Reproducible Perovskite Solar Cells

TL;DR

This paper introduces a universal triple co-solvent system to enhance perovskite ink wetting on self-assembled monolayers, significantly improving device efficiency and reproducibility across various perovskite compositions.

Contribution

The study develops a novel co-solvent approach that improves ink-substrate interaction, enabling uniform perovskite layers and high-efficiency solar cells with diverse compositions.

Findings

Achieved over 20% efficiency in perovskite solar cells.

Demonstrated improved ink wetting and uniformity across different compositions.

Validated the universality of the co-solvent strategy for various perovskite materials.

Abstract

Perovskite solar cells employing self assembled monolayers such as Me-4PACz as hole transport layer has been reported to demonstrate high device efficiency. However, the poor perovskite wetting on the Me-4PACz caused by poor perovskite ink interaction with the underlying Me-4PACz presents significant challenges for fabricating efficient perovskite devices. A triple co-solvent system comprising of dimethylformamide (DMF), dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) and N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP) is employed to improve the perovskite ink-substrate interaction and obtain a uniform perovskite layer. In comparison to DMF, DMSO-based inks, the inclusion of NMP shows considerably higher binding energies of the perovskite ink with Me-4PACz as revealed by density-functional theory calculations. With the optimized triple co-solvent ratio, the perovskite devices deliver high power conversion efficiencies of >20%, 19.5% and ~18.5% for active areas of 0.16 cm2, 0.72 cm2 and 1.08 cm2 respectively. Importantly, this perovskite ink-substrate interaction approach is universal and helps in obtaining a uniform layer and high photovoltaic device performance for other perovskite compositions such as MAPbI3, FAMAPbI3-xBrx, and MA-free FACsPbI3-xBrx.