Crown Ether‐Assisted Growth and Scaling Up of FACsPbI₃ Films for Efficient and Stable Perovskite Solar Modules

Abstract

FACs‐based (FA+, formamidinium and Cs+, cesium) perovskite solar cells have gained great attention due to their remarkable light and thermal stabilities toward practical application of perovskite modules. However, the moisture instability and difficulty in scalable fabrication are still the main obstacles blocking their photovoltaic applications in current status. Here, the employment of novel interaction between crown ether with metal cations is introduced to tailor the uniform growth and inhibit moisture invasion during the crystallization of α‐phase FACsPbI3, yielding the successful synthesis of high‐quality perovskite films in a large scale. Consequently, perovskite solar cells (PSC) modules in the total area of 4 × 4 and 10 × 10 cm2 are readily fabricated with respective champion efficiencies of 16.69% and 13.84% and excellent stability over 1000 h. This facile scaling‐up strategy assisted by crown ether has shown great promise for pursuing efficient and highly stable large‐area PSC modules.

Scalable Preparation of High‐Performance ZnO–SnO2 Cascaded Electron Transport Layer for Efficient Perovskite Solar Modules

“…As seen from the photographs of the prepared films (Figure S7, Supporting Information), the fabrication of uniform perovskite and HTL layers was achieved by the blade coating method. [ 28,29 ] The cross‐sectional SEM images collected from the typical 6 × 6 cm 2 module further verified that the as‐produced ETL, perovskite, and HTL films by the scalable deposition method have an excellent uniformity across the large area (Figure S8, Supporting Information). Compared with the bare ZnO ETL (Figure 2b), a much flattened interface between ETL and perovskites can be observed on the SnO 2 and cascaded ZnO–SnO 2 bilayers, which is consistent with the AFM characterization, as shown in Figure 1.…”

“…The deposition of perovskite film refers to our previous report. [ 29 ] In brief, the perovskite precursor containing 1 mmol PbI 2 , 0.95 mmol FAI, 0.05 mmol CsI, and 0.4 mmol MACl dissolved in 400 μL DMF and 100 μL NMP, was dropped (4−20 μL) at the gap between the substrates and blade, followed by the blade coating at a constant rate about 2 mm s −1 . Then, the wet film on the substrate was transferred to a home‐made vacuum chamber to perform the vacuum‐flash process, in which the pressure can be rapidly dropped to ≈10 2 Pa from atmospheric pressure within 30 s. After maintaining at this pressure for about 2 min, the samples were then transferred to the hot plate and annealed for 15 min at 110 °C.…”

Progress in Perovskite Solar Cells towards Commercialization—A Review

“…Cooperation bonds between Pb ion and DMSO help to control the crystalline process of perovskite films. Inspired by this, Chen et al employed crown ether as a Lewis base to further slow crystal growth, resulting in 4 cm × 4 cm PSMs with a PCE of 16.69% and excellent stability greater than 1000 h [ 97 ]. Novel forces such as hydrogen-bonding have attract researchers’ attention.…”

Progress and challenges on scaling up of perovskite solar cell technology

“…Recently, PVK degradation mechanisms have been reported 21 and different materials are tested to replace less stable systems 22 . Up to now, large-scale (100 cm 2 ) PSCs show promising stabilities 23,24 . Nevertheless, there is still a long way towards commercialization, especially compared with c-Si PV.…”