The photovoltaics of organic–inorganic lead halide perovskite materials have shown rapid improvements in solar cell performance, surpassing the top efficiency of semiconductor compounds such as CdTe and CIGS (copper indium gallium selenide) used in solar cells in just about a decade. Perovskite preparation via simple and inexpensive solution processes demonstrates the immense potential of this thin-film solar cell technology to become a low-cost alternative to the presently commercially available photovoltaic technologies. Significant developments in almost all aspects of perovskite solar cells and discoveries of some fascinating properties of such hybrid perovskites have been made recently. This Review describes the fundamentals, recent research progress, present status, and our views on future prospects of perovskite-based photovoltaics, with discussions focused on strategies to improve both intrinsic and extrinsic (environmental) stabilities of high-efficiency devices. Strategies and challenges regardi...

Halide Perovskite Photovoltaics: Background, Status, and Future Prospects

Although β-CsPbI3 has a bandgap favorable for application in tandem solar cells, depositing and stabilizing β-CsPbI3 experimentally has remained a challenge. We obtained highly crystalline β-CsPbI3 films with an extended spectral response and enhanced phase stability. Synchrotron-based x-ray scattering revealed the presence of highly oriented β-CsPbI3 grains, and sensitive elemental analyses-including inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry and time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry-confirmed their all-inorganic composition. We further mitigated the effects of cracks and pinholes in the perovskite layer by surface treating with choline iodide, which increased the charge-carrier lifetime and improved the energy-level alignment between the β-CsPbI3 absorber layer and carrier-selective contacts. The perovskite solar cells made from the treated material have highly reproducible and stable efficiencies reaching 18.4% under 45 ± 5°C ambient conditions.

Thermodynamically stabilized β-CsPbI3-based perovskite solar cells with efficiencies >18.

The all-inorganic α-CsPbI3 perovskite with the most suitable band gap faces serious challenges of low phase stability and high moisture sensitivity. We discover that a simple phenyltrimethylammonium bromide (PTABr) post-treatment could achieve a bifunctional stabilization including both gradient Br doping (or alloying) and surface passivation. The PTABr treatment on CsPbI3 only induces less than 5 nm blue shift in UV–vis absorbance but significantly stabilize the perovskite phase with much better stability. Finally, the highly stable PTABr treated CsPbI3 based perovskite solar cells exhibit a reproducible photovoltaic performance with a champion efficiency up to 17.06% and stable output of 16.3%. Therefore, this one-step bifunctional stabilization of perovskite through gradient halide doping and surface organic cation passivation presents a novel and promising strategy to design stable and high performance all-inorganic lead halide.

Bifunctional Stabilization of All-Inorganic α-CsPbI3 Perovskite for 17% Efficiency Photovoltaics.

When translating photovoltaic technology from laboratory to commercial products, low cost, high power conversion efficiency, and high stability (long lifetime) are the three key metrics to consider in addition to other factors, such as low toxicity, low energy payback time, etc. As one of the most promising photovoltaic materials with high efficiency, today organic–inorganic metal halide perovskites draw tremendous attention from fundamental research, but their practical relevance still remains unclear owing to the notorious short device operation time. In this comment, we discuss the stability issue of perovskite photovoltaics and call for standardized protocols for device characterizations that could possibly match the silicon industrial standards.

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Addressing the stability issue of perovskite solar cells for commercial applications

Inorganic halide perovskites (IHPs) have recently attracted huge attention in the field of optoelectronics. IHPs are generally expected to exhibit superior chemical stability over the prevailing hybrid organic–inorganic perovskites that are widely used in optoelectronic devices such as solar cells and light-emitting devices. This is primarily owing to the elimination of weakly-bonded organic components in the IHP crystal structure. Nevertheless, many recent studies have revealed that IHPs still suffer significant issues in chemical instability, and thus, a lot of effort has been made towards the stabilization of IHPs for high-performance devices. In this context, a great deal of interest in the chemistry and perovskite community has been emerging to understand the chemical (in)stability of IHPs and develop engineering strategies for making more robust perovskite devices. This review will summarize the past research progress in this direction, give insights into the IHP (in)stability, and provide perspectives for the future effort in making stable IHP materials and devices.

Chemical stability and instability of inorganic halide perovskites

Inorganic halide perovskites such as cesium lead halide are promising due to their excellent thermal stability. Cesium lead iodide (CsPbI3) has a bandgap of 1.73 eV and is very suitable for making efficient tandem solar cells, either with low-bandgap perovskite or silicon. However, the phase instability of CsPbI3 is hindering the further optimization of device performance. Here, we show that high quality and stable α-phase CsPbI3 film is obtained via solvent-controlled growth of the precursor film in a dry environment. A 15.7% power conversion efficiency of CsPbI3 solar cells is achieved, which is the highest efficiency reported for inorganic perovskite solar cells up to now. And more importantly, the devices can tolerate continuous light soaking for more than 500 h without efficiency drop.

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Solvent-controlled growth of inorganic perovskite films in dry environment for efficient and stable solar cells.

Perovskite crystal film quality is critical for obtaining efficient perovskite solar cells. Anti-solvent processing was used for fast crystallization of perovskite precursor film, which can form dense perovskite film. However, the crystals from this method are usually small due to the fast crystal growth process, which could lead to grain boundary recombination. Here, element chloride is introduced to enhance the perovskite layer crystallinity via slowing down the perovskite crystallization process by simultaneous introduction of methylammounium chloride (MACl) and cesium chloride (CsCl) into precursor solution. As a result, we achieve high quality of pin-hole free perovskite film with large crystal size. A power conversion efficiency of 21.55% with free of hysteresis of the device is obtained, which is among the highest efficiency of planar structure perovskite solar cells.

Yuqin Zhou

Papers

Solvent-controlled growth of inorganic perovskite films in dry environment for efficient and stable solar cells.

Synergistic improvement of perovskite film quality for efficient solar cells via multiple chloride salt additives