Improving the Open-Circuit Voltage of Sn-Based Perovskite Solar Cells by Band Alignment at the Electron Transport Layer/Perovskite Layer Interface

Abstract

Organic-inorganic lead halide perovskites are promising materials for realization of low-cost and high-efficiency solar cells. Because of the toxicity of lead, Sn-based perovskite materials have been developed as alternatives to enable fabrication of Pb-free perovskite solar cells. However, the solar cell performance of Sn-based perovskite solar cells (Sn-PSCs) remains poor because of their large open-circuit voltage (<i>V</i>_OC) loss. Sn-based perovskite materials have lower electron affinities than Pb-based perovskite materials, which result in larger conduction band offset (CBO) values at the interface between the Sn-based perovskite and a conventional electron transport layer (ETL) material such as TiO₂. Herein, the relationship between the <i>V</i>_OC and the CBO in these devices was studied to improve the solar cell performances of Sn-PSCs. It was found that the band offset at the ETL/perovskite layer interface affects the <i>V</i>_OC of the Sn-PSCs significantly but does not affect that of the Pb-PSCs because the Sn-based perovskite material is a p-type semiconductor, unlike the Pb-based perovskite. It was also found that Nb₂O₅ has the CBO that is closest to zero for Sn-based perovskite materials, and the <i>V</i>_OC values of Sn-PSCs that use Nb₂O₅ as their ETL are higher than those of Sn-PSCs using TiO₂ or SnO₂ ETLs. This study indicates that control of the energy alignment at the ETL/perovskite layer interface is an important factor in improving the <i>V</i>_OC values of Sn-PSCs.