Abstract

Inorganic-organic hybrid perovskite solar cells have demonstrated considerable improvements, reaching 25.5% of certified power conversion efficiency in 2020 from 3.8% in 2009. In normal structured perovskite solar cells, TiO₂ electrontransporting materials require heat treatment process at a high temperature over 450℃ to induce crystallinity. Inverted perovskite solar cells have also been studied to exclude the additional thermal process by using [6,6]-phenyl-C₆₁-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) as a non-oxide electron-transporting layer. However, the drawback of the PCBM layer is a charge accumulation at the interface between PCBM and a metal electrode. The impact of bathocuproin (BCP) buffer layer on photovoltaic performance has been investigated herein to solve the problem of PCBM. 2-mM BCP-modified perovskite solar cells were observed to exhibit a maximum efficiency of 12.03% compared with BCP-free counterparts (5.82%) due to the suppression of the charge accumulation at the PCBM-Au interface and the resulting reduction of the charge recombination between perovskite and the PCBM layer.

• Keywords: Solar cells, Perovskites, Buffer layer, Bathocuproin, Charge recombination