Issue 40, 2019

Plasma-assisted atomic layer deposition of nickel oxide as hole transport layer for hybrid perovskite solar cells

Abstract

Low-temperature atomic layer deposition (ALD) offers significant merits in terms of processing uniform, conformal and pinhole-free thin films, with sub-nanometer thickness control. In this work, plasma-assisted atomic layer deposition (ALD) of nickel oxide (NiO) is carried out by adopting bis-methylcyclopentadienyl-nickel (Ni(MeCp)2) as precursor and O2 plasma as co-reactant, over a wide table temperature range of 50–300 °C. A growth rate of 0.32 Å per cycle is obtained for films deposited at 150 °C with an excellent thickness uniformity on a 4 inch silicon wafer. Bulk characteristics of the NiO film together with its interfacial properties with a triple cation hybrid perovskite absorber layer are comprehensively investigated, with the aim of integrating NiO as hole transport layer (HTL) in a p–i–n perovskite solar cell (PSC) architecture. It is concluded that “key” to efficient solar cell performance is the post-annealing treatment of the ALD NiO films in air, prior to perovskite synthesis. Post-annealing leads to better wettability of the perovskite layer and increased conductivity and mobility of the NiO films, delivering an increase in short-circuit current density (Jsc) and fill factor (FF) in the fabricated devices. Overall, a superior 17.07% PCE is achieved in the post-annealed NiO-based PSC when compared to the 13.98% PCE derived from the one with pristine NiO.

Graphical abstract: Plasma-assisted atomic layer deposition of nickel oxide as hole transport layer for hybrid perovskite solar cells

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
05 Aug 2019
Accepted
17 Sep 2019
First published
23 Sep 2019
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY-NC license

J. Mater. Chem. C, 2019,7, 12532-12543

Plasma-assisted atomic layer deposition of nickel oxide as hole transport layer for hybrid perovskite solar cells

D. Koushik, M. Jošt, A. Dučinskas, C. Burgess, V. Zardetto, C. Weijtens, M. A. Verheijen, W. M. M. Kessels, S. Albrecht and M. Creatore, J. Mater. Chem. C, 2019, 7, 12532 DOI: 10.1039/C9TC04282B

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