Spontaneously supersaturated nucleation strategy for high reproducible and efficient perovskite solar cells

High-quality perovskite films are predominantly prepared by anti-solvent assisted spin-coating method. However, small device size and narrow operation window limit their applications in practical and scalable production. Here, a spontaneously supersaturated nucleation strategy is developed to fabricate high-quality perovskite films without any antisolvents. The rapid precipitation behavior of the precursor solutions could be triggered by the volatilization of methylamine ethanol at the initial film formation stage, forming uniform and compact intermediate phase films. Mirror-like large area (10 cm x 10 cm) methylammonium lead triiodide (MAPbI(3)) perovskite films with micrometer-sized grains can be achieved by phase transition via annealing. The average power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 19.4% is achieved for 0.1 cm(2) perovskite solar cells (PSCs). The 1 cm(2) device shows a PCE of 17.57% and retains 96.8% after aging for 39 days in the air with a relative humidity of 5-30%. The perovskite module based on the perovskite films prepared by our strategy exhibits a PCE of 13.13%. The perovskite film fabrication method developed in this work shows high reproducibility of the fabrication process due to the spontaneous nucleation process. Meanwhile, it also exhibits significant potential in the application of scalable solution processing deposition techniques toward the commercialization of PSCs.

Automated summary

A new spontaneously supersaturated nucleation strategy has been developed to fabricate high-quality perovskite films without using any antisolvents. Through self-nucleation process, large-area perovskite films with high power conversion efficiency were successfully prepared. This method shows high reproducibility in the fabrication process and significant potential in the commercialization of PSCs.