Chemical Bath Deposited Antimony Oxide Thin Films for Efficient Perovskite Solar Cells.

Ling, Xufeng; Guo, Junjun; Li, Yiping; Shen, Chengxia; Wang, Yao; Zhang, Xuliang; Zhao, Xinyu; Wang, Hongyu et al. · Nano Lett · 2024

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

The metal oxide electron transport layers (ETLs) of <i>n-i-p</i> perovskite solar cells (PSCs) are dominated by TiO<sub>2</sub> and SnO<sub>2</sub>, while the efficacy of the other metal oxide ETLs still lags far behind. Herein, an emerging, economical, and environmentally friendly metal oxide, antimony oxide (Sb<sub>2</sub>O<sub><i>x</i></sub>, <i>x</i> = 2.17), prepared by chemical bath deposition is reported as an alternative ETL for PSCs. The deposited Sb<sub>2</sub>O<sub><i>x</i></sub> film is amorphous and very thin (∼10 nm) but conformal on rough fluorine-doped tin oxide substrates, showing matched energy levels, efficient electron extraction, and then reduced nonradiative recombination in PSCs. The champion PSC based on the Sb<sub>2</sub>O<sub><i>x</i></sub> ETL delivers an impressive power conversion efficiency of 24.7% under one sun illumination, which represents the state-of-the-art performance of all metal oxide ETL-based PSCs. Additionally, the Sb<sub>2</sub>O<sub><i>x</i></sub>-based devices show improved operational and thermal stability compared to their SnO<sub>2</sub>-based counterparts. Armed with these findings, we believe this work offers an optional ETL for perovskites-based optoelectronic devices.