Nature inspiring processing route toward high throughput production of perovskite photovoltaics

Hidetaka Ishihara, Som Sarang, Yen Chang Chen, Oliver Lin, Pisrut Phummirat, Lai Thung, Jose Hernandez, Sayantani Ghosh, Vincent Tung*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

34 Scopus citations

Abstract

We report our results of developing perovskite thin films with high coverage, improved uniformity and preserved crystalline continuity in a single pass deposition. This approach, inspired by the natural phenomena of tears of wine, works by regulating the hydrodynamics of the material comprising of droplets during spray-pyrolysis. In contrast to conventional spray-pyrolysis where droplets dry independently and form a rough morphology, the use of binary solvent system creates localized surface tension gradients that initiate Marangoni flows, thus directing the incoming droplets to spontaneously undergo coalescing, merging and spreading into a continuous wet films before drying. By systematically exploring the dynamics of spreading and drying, we achieve spray-coated perovskite photovoltaics with power conversion efficiency of 14.2%, a near two-fold improvement than that of the spray-pyrolysis counterpart. Of particular significance is the fact that the single pass deposition technique unveils novel inroads in efficient management of lead consumption during deposition.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)6989-6997
Number of pages9
JournalJOURNAL OF MATERIALS CHEMISTRY A
Volume4
Issue number18
DOIs
StatePublished - 2016
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 The Royal Society of Chemistry.

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Chemistry
  • Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment
  • General Materials Science

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