Perovskite solar cells with 18.21% efficiency and area over 1 cm2 fabricated by heterojunction engineering

Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) are promising low-cost photovoltaic technologies with high solar-to-electric power conversion efficiency (PCE). The heterojunction structure between perovskite and charge extraction layers is crucial to the photovoltaic performance of PSCs. Here, we report efficient inverted-structured PSCs with a perovskite-fullerene graded heterojunction (GHJ), in which the electron-accepting material is distributed in the perovskite layer with a gradient. This structure can enhance the PCE as it improves the photoelectron collection and reduces recombination loss, especially for the formamidinium cation-based perovskite. The conformal fullerene coating on perovskite during the GHJ deposition achieves a full coverage with reduced layer thickness, thus minimizing the resistive loss in larger sized devices. Our strategy enables the fabrication of centimetre-scale PSCs showing high efficiency with small hysteresis and good stability. A PCE of 18.21% was certified by an independent institution for cells with an aperture area of 1.022 cm(2).