Recent Advances in Solution-Processed Hybrid Nanostructured Tin Monosulfide Solar Cells
Dong Ding a
a Department of Chemistry and Centre for Plastic Electronics, Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, London, United Kingdom
International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics
Proceedings of International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics (HOPV18)
Benidorm, Spain, 2018 May 28th - 31st
Organizers: Emilio Palomares and Rene Janssen
Poster, Dong Ding, 055
Publication date: 21st February 2018

Tin mono-sulphide (SnS) has emerged as a promising photovoltaic material because of the earth-abundance, non-toxicity and its optical properties. SnS exhibits a high absorption coefficient (>104cm-1) and an ideal band gap of 1.3 eV (ca. 950 nm), which make it an excellent light absorber for photovoltaic applications. To date, the highest power conversion efficiency (PCE) of SnS-based solar cells is up to 4.6%1 although the theoretical PCE is 32%; and SnS layers were obtained by atomic layer deposition. There are very few attempts using fast and cost-efficient methods; therefore, solution-processed fabrication methods for SnS thin films as well as the conjugated organic semiconductors to prepare hybrid solar cells are particularly interesting.

In this work, we present the recent progress on the optimisation of a solution-processed fabrication method with the device architecture: glass/ITO/planar-TiO2/SnS/P3HT/MoO3/Ag. The nanostructured SnS is prepared by spin coating of a precursor solution containing tin (II) chloride and thioacetamide, followed by thermal annealing. The SnS nanoplates can be infiltrated with a polymer layer in order to get a nanostructured hybrid heterojunction. Before optimisation, this device achieved a power conversion efficiency of 1.2%.2 Here we present the recent achievement of the above architecture by using mesoporous cell structure, and modifying the SnS precursor solution. X-ray diffraction (XRD) shows that this optimised cell eliminates the secondary phase such as SnS2 and Sn2S3. Moreover, these optimised solar cells exhibit much better PCEs of 3.0% and excellent short-circuit current above 23 mA/cm2.

exhaustive transient absorption spectroscopy (TAS) study on this mesoporous structure has revealed that the amount of long-lived charges generated is more than twice of the planar structure. Furthermore, we have investigated the impact of SnS precursor solution composition on the SnS nanoplates growth, thin film quality and ultimately the cell performance. Further investigations about overcoming the sulfur deficiency and improving the open-circuit voltage are ongoing in our laboratory.

1. Sinsermsuksakul, P.; Sun, L.; Lee, S. W.; Park, H. H.; Kim, S. B.; Yang, C.; Gordon, R. G. Adv. Energy Mater. 2014, 1400496.

2. T. Rath, L. Gury, I. Sánchez-Molina, L. Martínez and S. A. Haque, Chem. Commun., 2015, 51, 10198–10201.

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