Journal of Power Sources, Vol.339, 27-32, 2017
Pristine fullerenes mixed by vacuum-free solution process: Efficient electron transport layer for planar perovskite solar cells
Discovery of organic-inorganic hybrid perovskites, ignites the dream of next-generation solar cells fabricated by low-cost solution processing. To date, fullerene derivative [6,6]-phenyl-C-61- butyric acid methyl ester (PC61BM), is the most prevalently used electron transport layer for high efficiency p-i-n planar heterojunction perovskite solar cells. Compared with PC61BM, pristine fullerenes, such as C-60 and C-70, have shown superiority of higher electron mobility and much lower costs. Due to the poor solubility and strong tendency to crystallize for pristine fullerenes in solution process, it is still a challenge to deposit compact and continuous film of pristine fullerenes for p-i-n type perovskite solar cells by solution processing. Herein, solution processed pristine fullerenes (C-60 and C-70) were used as electron transport layers to replace PC61BM in perovskite solar cells with high performance and enhanced stability. Power conversion efficiency of 14.04% was obtained by using mixture of C-60 and C-70 as electron transport layer, which is comparable to that of PC61BM based device (13.74%). We demonstrated that the strong tendency of pristine fullerenes to crystallize during solvent removal can be largely mitigated by mixing different kinds of pristine fullerenes. These findings implicate pristine fullerenes as promising electron transport layers for high performance perovskite solar cells. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords:Perovskite solar cell;Pristine fullerene;Solution process;Vacuum-free;Electron transport layer