Acetylacetone-TiO2 Promoted Large Area Compatible Cascade Electron Transport Bilayer for Efficient Perovskite Solar Cells

In designing efficient perovskite solar cells (PSCs), the selection of suitable electron transport layers (ETLs) is critical to the final device performance as they determine the driving force for selective charge extraction. SnO2 nanoparticles (NPs) based ETLs have been a popular choice for PSCs due to superior electron mobility, but their relatively deep-lying conduction band energy levels (E-CB) result in substantial potential loss. Meanwhile, TiO2 NPs establish favorable band alignment owing to shallower E-CB, but their low intrinsic mobility and abundant surface trap sites impede the final performance. For this reason, constructing a cascaded bilayer ETL is highly desirable for efficient PSCs, as it can rearrange energy levels and exploit on advantages of an individual ETL. In this study, we prepare SnO2 NPs and acetylacetone-modified TiO2 (Acac-TiO2) NPs and implement them as bilayer SnO2/Acac-TiO2 (BST) ETL, to assemble cascaded energy band structure. SnO2 contributes to rapid charge carrier transport from high electron mobility while Acac-TiO2 minimizes band-offset and effectively suppresses interfacial recombination. Accordingly, the optimized BST ETL generates synergistic influence and delivers power conversion efficiency (PCE) as high as 23.14% with open-circuit voltage (V-OC) reaching 1.14 V. Furthermore, the BST ETL is transferred to a large scale and the corresponding mini module demonstrates peak performance of 18.39% PCE from 25 cm(2) aperture area. Finally, the BST-based mini module exhibit excellent stability, maintaining 83.1% of its initial efficiency after 1000 h under simultaneous 1 Sun light-soaking and damp heat (85 degrees C/RH 85%) environment.

Automated summary

In designing efficient perovskite solar cells, the selection of suitable electron transport layers is critical. This study presents a cascaded bilayer electron transport layer (ETL) comprised of SnO2 and acetylacetone-modified TiO2 (Acac-TiO2) nanoparticles. The SnO2 layer facilitates rapid charge carrier transport while the Acac-TiO2 layer minimizes band-offset and suppresses recombination at the interface. The optimized cascaded ETL achieves a high power conversion efficiency of 23.14% in a mini module and exhibits excellent stability.