Gas‐Assisted Spray Coating of Perovskite Solar Cells Incorporating Sprayed Self‐Assembled Monolayers

Abstract

Self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) are becoming widely utilized as hole-selective layers in high-performance p-i-n architecture perovskite solar cells. Ultrasonic spray coating and airbrush coating are demonstrated here as effective methods to deposit MeO-2PACz; a carbazole-based SAM. Potential dewetting of hybrid perovskite precursor solutions from this layer is overcome using optimized solvent rinsing protocols. The use of air-knife gas-quenching is then explored to rapidly remove the volatile solvent from an MAPbI 3 precursor film spray-coated onto an MeO-2PACz SAM, allowing fabrication of p-i-n devices with power conversion efficiencies in excess of 20%, with all other layers thermally evaporated. This combination of deposition techniques is consistent with a rapid, roll-to-roll manufacturing process for the fabrication of large-area solar cells.

Evaporated Self‐Assembled Monolayer Hole Transport Layers: Lossless Interfaces in p‐i‐n Perovskite Solar Cells

“…[49] Critically, deposition of SAM-HTLs has thus far been limited to solution-based methods. [8,44,46,[48][49][50][51][52] Development of alternative scalable deposition methods, such as vacuum-based evaporation techniques, is crucial to improve process flexibility. Commercial PV production lines predominantly utilize vacuum-based deposition methods, allowing ready incorporation of vacuum-based methods for large-scale perovskite production.…”

Nonplanar Spray-Coated Perovskite Solar Cells

“…32 Here, the use of an air knife reduces the complexity of the deposition process as it does not require the use of a timeconsuming vacuum-transfer step. We have previously described the use of a gas-jet in the fabrication of spray-cast MAPbI 3 perovskite devices 33 and report the full optimization of this process when applied to CsFAPI-based devices in ref 34.…”

Argon-Assisted Spray-Coating Induced Efficient and Stable MAPbI3 Perovskite Solar Cells

“…Herein, inspired by the gas-assisted method, − we introduced the argon-assisted spraying method to control the nucleation and crystallization of perovskite films. Dense and high-quality perovskite films were obtained; meanwhile, the PCE of PSCs increased by 60% after using the argon-assisted process.…”