Controlled doping for adjustable material polarity and charge carrier concentration is the basis of semiconductor materials and devices, and it is much more difficult to achieve in ionic semiconductors (e.g., ZnO and GaN) than in covalent semiconductors (e.g., Si and Ge), due to the high intrinsic defect density in ionic semiconductors. The organic-inorganic perovskite material, which is frenetically being researched for applications in solar cells and beyond, is also an ionic semiconductor. Here we present the Ag-incorporated organic-inorganic perovskite films and planar heterojunction solar cells. Partial substitution of Pb by Ag leads to improved film morphology, crystallinity, and carrier dynamics as well as shifted Fermi level and reduced electron concentration. Consequently, in planar heterojunction photovoltaic devices with inverted stacking structure, Ag incorporation results in an enhancement of the power conversion efficiency from 16.0% to 18.4% in MAPbI based devices and from 11.2% to 15.4% in MAPbICl based devices. Our work implies that Ag incorporation is a feasible route to adjust carrier concentrations in solution-processed perovskite materials in spite of the high concentration of intrinsic defects.

Organic-inorganic perovskites are promising light absorbing active materials for photodetectors; however, the performance of current organic-inorganic perovskite-based photodetectors are limited by the high dark current due to hole injection at the cathode interlayer typically composed of fullerene derivatives. We have developed a mixture interlayer by simply blending polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) with [6,6]-phenyl-C61-butyric acidmethyl ester (PCBM). Scanning Kelvin probe microscopy imaging reveals that the presence of PMMA reduced the work function of the PCBM:PMMA interlayer, which leads to increased energy barrier for hole injection and better hole-blocking property. Optimized perovskite photodetector with PCBM:PMMA hole-blocking interlayer exhibits a high detectivity of 1.1 × 1013 Jones, a broad linear dynamic range of 112 dB, and a fast response time of 2.2 μs.

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