Crystallization Regulation and Morphological Evolution for HTM-free Tin-Lead (1.28eV) Alloyed Perovskite Solar Cells

Abstract

There have been huge achievements of all-perovskite tandem solar cells, which recently realized the highest power conversion efficiency of 24.8%. However, the complex device structure and complicated manufacture processes severely restrict the further development of all-perovskite tandem solar cells. In this work, we successfully fabricated high-efficiency hole transport material-free (HTM-free) Sn−Pb alloyed narrow bandgap perovskite solar cells (PSCs) by introducing guanidinium thiocyanate (GASCN) and hydroiodic acid (HI) into the perovskite precursor solution. GASCN and HI play a positive synergy effect during perovskite crystallization process resulting in larger grain size, fewer surface defects, and lower trap density to suppress the Sn2+ oxidation degradation. Furthermore, they could effectively adjust the energy level of perovskite materials, reduce the energy level difference between perovskite and ITO resulting in more efficiently transport of free hole charge carriers. As a result, with adding GASCN and HI, the achieved highest power conversion efficiency of HTM-free devices increased from 12.58% to 17.85%, which is one of the highest PCEs among all values reported to date for the HTM-free narrow-bandgap (1.2–1.4 eV) Sn−Pb binary PSCs. Moreover, the optimized device shows improved environmental stability. Our additive strategy manifests a remarkable step towards the facile, cost-efficient fabrication of HTM-free perovskite-based tandem solar cells with both high efficiency and simple fabrication process.