Renewable Energy Global Innovations features: CH3NH3PbI3 Converted from Reactive Magnetron Sputtered PbO for Large Area Perovskite Solar Cells

Significance Statement

Exponential growth in both interest and attention paid to the organic-inorganic metal halide perovskites materials have spiked undeniable concern of late. The outstanding properties possessed by these materials carry all the credit. These properties, including: long exciton diffusion length, strong absorption coefficients, low cost, ease of Synthesis and environmental-friendliness have led to great advancement in perovskite solar cells such as improving the power conversion efficiency from around ten percent in the early years of this decade to about twenty percent at present. Recent studies have shown that the quality and morphology of the perovskite films are crucial to its photoelectric properties and that they directly influence the performance of the resultant perovskite solar cells. Even though several deposition techniques have been proposed for synthesis of the perovskite light-absorption layers, great difficulties are still being encountered in the bid to fabricate perovskite films with both satisfactory coverage and uniformity over a large area.

Researchers led by Professor Meicheng Li at the State Key Laboratory of Alternate Electrical Power System with Renewable Energy Sources in North China Electric Power University developed a novel process route based on direct current reactive magnetron sputtering in the preparation of the CH₃NH₃PbI₃ film. They aimed at presenting a complete approach for the fabrication of large area perovskites solar cells with the advantages of easy control, economical and requiring less use of toxic reagents but with diverse potential applications. Their research work is now published in Solar Energy Materials & Solar Cells.

The research team began by fabricating the lead oxide film on an FTO-glass substrate coated with a nanocrystalline rutile titania by using a pure metallic lead target in an argon-oxygen mixture. They then converted the prepared lead oxide film to CH₃NH₃PbI₃ through the sequential reactions setup in isopropanol solution of CH₃NH₃I. Eventually, the research team fabricated solar cells of a complex structure that employed nanocrystalline rutile titania as the contact layer of the photovoltaic devices.

The authors were able to observe that the as-prepared perovskite film exhibited a surface morphology of high uniformity and excellent coverage over a large scale. Also the crystal grains were seen to reach the size of up to 600 nm, which is beneficial to extract photo-generated electrons more effectively and prepare the perovskites solar cells at low temperature.

The new approach employed in their study is technically spin-coating-free for the formation of large area CH₃NH₃PbI₃ film and exhibits advantages ranging from easy process control, economical all the way to less use of toxic reagents. Of crucial importance, it is expected that this novel technique will be applied for the synthesis of perovskites solar cells or other thin-film devices and thus entails potential applications and practical significance.

The schematic illustration of CH3NH3PbI3 formation (on NRT-coated FTO glass substrate) through the sputtered PbO.

The top-view SEM of CH3NH3PbI3 converted from the sputtered PbO, where the insertions are the corresponding one with high magnification.

About The Author

Zhirong Zhang is a Ph.D candidate, who studied at the State Key Laboratory of Alternate Electrical Power System with Renewable Energy Sources in North China Electric Power University, under the supervision of Prof. Meicheng Li. He received his B.S. degree majored in Radio Physics, from Lanzhou University, in 2008. His research interests include development of thin film solar cells and the design & application of photovoltaic system. He has been working on perovskite solar cells since the year of 2013.

About The Author

Prof. Meicheng Li is the Director of New Energy Materials and PV Technology Center, and the Vice Dean of the School of Renewable Energy, North China Electric Power University. He obtained his PhD at Harbin Institute of Technology in 2001. He worked in University of Cambridge as Research Fellow from 2004 to 2006. He won the Excellent Talents in the New Century by the ministry of education in 2006. His current research topic is the New Energy Materials and Devices, such as perovskite solar cells, lithium ion battery system. Till now, he contributed more than 200 journal articles and performed the review services for about 80 SCI journals. He got almost more than 10 items of awards for the science and technology success. He served more than 20 academic conferences as the chair, track co-chair or session chair. He is an executive fellow of the China Energy Society, fellow of Chinese Society for Optical Engineering.

Website , Research Gate.

Reference

Zhirong Zhang, Meicheng Li, Wenjian Liu, Xiaopeng Yue, Peng Cui, Dong Wei. CH₃NH₃PbI₃ converted from reactive magnetron sputtered lead oxide (PbO) for large area perovskite solar cells. Solar Energy Materials & Solar Cells, volume 163 (2017) pages 250–254.

 

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