Issue 12, 2016

Designing nanobowl arrays of mesoporous TiO2 as an alternative electron transporting layer for carbon cathode-based perovskite solar cells

Abstract

In this work, we have designed a mesoporous TiO2 nanobowl (NB) array with pore size, bowl size and film thickness being easily controllable by the sol–gel process and the polystyrene (PS) template diameter. Based on the TiO2 NB array, we fabricated carbon cathode based perovskite solar cells (C-PSCs) to investigate the impact of TiO2 NB nanostructures on the performance of the as-obtained C-PSCs devices. As expected, the TiO2 NB based devices show a higher power conversion efficiency (PCE) than that of the planar counterpart, mainly due to the enhanced light absorption arising from the NB-assisted light management, the improved pore-filling of high quality perovskite crystals and the increased interface contact for rapid electron extraction and fast charge transport. Leveraging these advantages of the novel TiO2 NB film, the 220 nm-PS templated TiO2 NB based devices performed the best on both light absorption capability and charge extraction, and achieved a PCE up to 12.02% with good stability, which is 37% higher than that of the planar counterpart. These results point to a viable and convenient route toward the fabrication of TiO2 ETL nanostructures for high performance PSCs.

Graphical abstract: Designing nanobowl arrays of mesoporous TiO2 as an alternative electron transporting layer for carbon cathode-based perovskite solar cells

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
28 sep 2015
Accepted
08 jan 2016
First published
11 jan 2016

Nanoscale, 2016,8, 6393-6402

Author version available

Designing nanobowl arrays of mesoporous TiO2 as an alternative electron transporting layer for carbon cathode-based perovskite solar cells

X. Zheng, Z. Wei, H. Chen, Q. Zhang, H. He, S. Xiao, Z. Fan, K. S. Wong and S. Yang, Nanoscale, 2016, 8, 6393 DOI: 10.1039/C5NR06715D

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