Issue 12, 2016

Effect of relative humidity on crystal growth, device performance and hysteresis in planar heterojunction perovskite solar cells

Abstract

Due to the hygroscopic nature of organolead halide perovskites, humidity is one of the most important factors affecting the efficiency and longevity of perovskite solar cells. Although humidity has a long term detrimental effect on device performance, it also plays a key role during the initial growth of perovskite crystals. Here we demonstrate that atmospheric relative humidity (RH) plays a key role during the formation of perovskite thin films via the sequential deposition technique. Our results indicate that the RH has a substantial impact on the crystallization process, and hence on device performance. SEM and pXRD analysis show an increase in crystallite size with increasing humidity. At low RH, the formation of small cubic crystallites with large gaps between them is observed. The presence of these voids adversely affects device performance and leads to substantial hysteresis in the device. At higher RH, the perovskite crystals are larger in size, with better connectivity between the crystallites. This produced efficient planar heterojunction solar cells with low hysteresis. By careful control of the RH during the cell fabrication process, efficiencies of up to 12.2% are reached using P3HT as the hole-transport material.

Graphical abstract: Effect of relative humidity on crystal growth, device performance and hysteresis in planar heterojunction perovskite solar cells

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
23 jun 2015
Accepted
17 sep 2015
First published
21 sep 2015
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Nanoscale, 2016,8, 6300-6307

Effect of relative humidity on crystal growth, device performance and hysteresis in planar heterojunction perovskite solar cells

M. K. Gangishetty, R. W. J. Scott and T. L. Kelly, Nanoscale, 2016, 8, 6300 DOI: 10.1039/C5NR04179A

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