Interfacial Defects Passivation of High Efficiency Perovskite Solar Modules

Luigi Vesce^a, Maurizio Stefanelli^a, Luigi Angelo Castriotta^a, Bowen Yang^b^,^c, Afshin Hadipour^d, Stijn Lammar^d, Jiajia Suo^b^,^c, Tom Aernouts^d, Anders Hagfeldt^b^,^c, Aldo Di Carlo^a^,^e

^aCHOSE (Centre for Hybrid and Organic Solar Energy), Department of Electronic Engineering, University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, via del Politecnico 1, 00133 Rome, Italy

^bEPFL École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Department of Chemical Sciences and Engineering, Switzerland, Switzerland

^cDepartment of Chemistry – Ångström Laboratory, Uppsala University, Sweden

^dIMEC partner in Solliance, Thin Film PV, Thor Park 8320, 3600 Genk, Belgium

^eCNR-ISM – Institute for Structure of the Matter, National Research Council, Rome, 00133, Italy.

International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics
Proceedings of International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics (HOPV22)

València, Spain, 2022 May 19th - 25th

Organizers: Pablo Docampo, Eva Unger and Elizabeth Gibson

Contributed talk, Luigi Vesce, presentation 064
DOI: https://doi.org/10.29363/nanoge.hopv.2022.064
Publication date: 20th April 2022

In ten years, halide perovskite (PVSK) solar cells reached efficiency comparable to silicon photovoltaic (PV) on small area devices [1]. This promising new PV technology can further be considered for industrial exploitation if the performance gap between laboratory cells and module devices will be nullify. The main scaling up issues are related to module design, interconnection patterning and material/process optimization [2]. In literature, few works showed high efficiency n-i-p module, but without reporting both reverse and forward scan, and statistics of the fabricated devices [3–6]. The hysteresis analysis, if present, revealed a huge discrepancy between the efficiency in reverse and forward (HI˃1.1). This anomalous hysteretic behavior of PVSK-based devices is still one of the obstacles in the pathway of their commercialization [7]. Moreover, during the fabrication process, many defects trap states and grain boundaries can occur [8]. Since the surface is where defects are mainly localized in any kind of solar cell, the PVSK surface passivation is one of the most efficient methods to suppress nonradiative recombination losses, and to improve charge carrier extraction and photovoltage [9,10].

In our work, by performing a judicious design of the module and cells interconnections with the transfer length method (TLM), exploiting interfacial defects PEAI (phenethylammonium iodide) passivation at module level (first time in literature) and optimizing an iodine rich triple cation composition and the related deposition procedure to avoid the detrimental effect of DMSO (dimethyl sulfoxide) solvent trapping during film formation, we report highly efficient n-i-p modules (10 cm² active area with 91% aspect ratio, reproducibility with 2% error) able to achieve an efficiency of 19.1% (reverse scan) – 18.5% (forward scan) with negligible hysteresis index (HI=1.03). Moreover, the scaling up losses have been reduced to only 8% (small area cell efficiency was 20.6%) showing the good passivation of defects, the optimal layers homogeneity on small and large area devices and the optimized patterning process by laser technique. We demonstrated the quality and the defects-free layers by materials (SEM, XRD, microscope images, PL, thickness, roughness, UV-vis) and device characterization (JV curves, MPPT, IPCE, LBIC).

References:

[1] Green, M.A.; Dunlop, E.D.; Hohl-Ebinger, J.; Yoshita, M.; Kopidakis, N.; Hao, X. Solar cell efficiency tables (Version 58). Prog. Photovoltaics Res. Appl. 2021, 29, 657–667

[2] Vesce, L.; Stefanelli, M.; Herterich, J.P.; Castriotta, L.A.; Kohlstädt, M.; Würfel, U.; Di Carlo, A. Ambient Air Blade-Coating Fabrication of Stable Triple-Cation Perovskite Solar Modules by Green Solvent Quenching. Sol. RRL 2021, 5, 1–11

[3] Yibo Xu, Shubo Wang, Leilei Gu, Ningyi Yuan, J.D. Structural Design for Efficient Perovskite Solar Modules. Sol. RRL 2021, 5

[4] Bu, T.; Li, J.; Li, H.; Tian, C.; Su, J.; Tong, G.; Ono, L.K.; Wang, C.; Lin, Z.; Chai, N.; et al. Lead halide-templated crystallization of methylamine-free perovskite for efficient photovoltaic modules. Science (80-. ). 2021, 372, 1327–1332

[5] Du, M.; Zhu, X.; Wang, L.; Wang, H.; Feng, J.; Jiang, X.; Cao, Y.; Sun, Y.; Duan, L.; Jiao, Y.; et al. High-Pressure Nitrogen-Extraction and Effective Passivation to Attain Highest Large-Area Perovskite Solar Module Efficiency. Adv. Mater. 2020, 32, 1–10

[6] Liu, C.; Yang, Y.; Rakstys, K.; Mahata, A.; Franckevicius, M.; Mosconi, E.; Skackauskaite, R.; Ding, B.; Brooks, K.G.; Usiobo, O.J.; et al. Tuning structural isomers of phenylenediammonium to afford efficient and stable perovskite solar cells and modules. Nat. Commun. 2021, 12, 1–9

[7] Snaith, H.J.; Abate, A.; Ball, J.M.; Eperon, G.E.; Leijtens, T.; Noel, N.K.; Stranks, S.D.; Wang, J.T.W.; Wojciechowski, K.; Zhang, W. Anomalous hysteresis in perovskite solar cells. J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 2014, 5, 1511–1515

[8] Zhu, H.; Liu, Y.; Eickemeyer, F.T.; Pan, L.; Ren, D.; Ruiz-Preciado, M.A.; Carlsen, B.; Yang, B.; Dong, X.; Wang, Z.; et al. Tailored Amphiphilic Molecular Mitigators for Stable Perovskite Solar Cells with 23.5% Efficiency. Adv. Mater. 2020, 32, 1–8

[9] Suo, J.; Yang, B.; Hagfeldt, A. Passivation strategies through surface reconstruction toward highly efficient and stable perovskite solar cells on n-i-p architecture. Energies 2021, 14

[10] Jiang, Q.; Zhao, Y.; Zhang, X.; Yang, X.; Chen, Y.; Chu, Z.; Ye, Q.; Li, X.; Yin, Z.; You, J. Surface passivation of perovskite film for efficient solar cells. Nat. Photonics 2019, 13, 460–466

Acknowledgements:

The authors were supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Framework Program for funding Research and Innovation under grant agreements no. 764047 (ESPResSo) and no. 826013 (IMPRESSIVE). The authors acknowledge the project UNIQUE, supported under the umbrella of SOLAR-ERA.NET_cofund by ANR, PtJ, MUR (GA 775970), MINECOAEI, SWEA, within the European Union Framework Programme for Research and Innovation Horizon 2020 (Cofund ERANET Action, No. 691664).

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