Improving the Performance and Reproducibility of Inverted Planar Perovskite Solar Cells Using Tetraethyl Orthosilicate as the Antisolvent

Antisolvent-assisted crystallization has been extensively used for perovskite solar cells (PSCs), although this approach has a fatal drawback, low reproducibility, originating from the extremely harsh operating conditions of the current antisolvents. As a result, only skilled technicians are qualified to be scheduled to prepare perovskite thin films to fabricate high-efficiency devices, which lowers the pace of progress of PSCs. Besides, the most popular antisolvents toluene (TL) and chlorobenzene (CB) are highly toxic and carcinogenic. On account of these, we tried to develop a low hazardous antisolvent that enabled us to achieve highly efficient and highly reproducible PSCs. Herein, tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) was employed in the inverted NiO _X-based planar PSC for engineering an efficient perovskite layer, achieving a power conversion efficiency of 17.02% on glass substrates and 14.49% on flexible polymer substrates with negligible hysteresis, which even outperformed TL and CB. More importantly, TEOS PSCs exhibited much higher reproducibility than that of their counterparts. These desirable features should be ascribed to the higher-quality perovskite films with larger grain size, reduced density of defects, and thus smoother carrier transportation and slower carrier recombination. This work drives another step toward industrial-scale commercialization of PSCs and also paves the way for environmentally friendly photovoltaic applications.

Synergy between TiO2 and CoxOy sites in electrocatalytic water decomposition

Recombination of the Co–OH and Ti–O species to form OOH.

Efficient charge-transport in hybrid lead iodide perovskite solar cells

We demonstrate a controllable TiCl₄ processing technique for mesoporous TiO₂ films, which modifies to achieve a uniform and high-coverage perovskite absorber layer, improves their charge collection and injection rate and enhances the device performance.

Enhanced photocurrent by the co-sensitization of ZnO with dye and CuInSe nanocrystals

ZnO@Cu_0.28In_1.72Se_2.72 (5–10 nm) was synthesised for the first time using a template-free method and a vacuum one-pot-nanocasting process without long-chain ligands.

Facile synthesis of CuInGaS2 quantum dot nanoparticles for bilayer-sensitized solar cells

TiO₂@CuIn_0.7Ga_0.3S₂ QDs (2–5 nm) were firstly synthesised by a vacuum one-pot-nanocasting process without long-chain ligands.