Vapor and Solution Compatible Perovskite Solar Cell Fabrication

Name: Valeria I. Guerra Dopazo Home Institution: The Pennsylvania State University Site: RTNN RT-REU @ University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Principal Investigator: Dr. Jim Cahoon – Department of Chemistry, UNC Chapel Hill Mentors: Alicia Bryan, Zack Krajnak Abstract: Hybrid halide perovskites (HP’s) are a class of semiconductors that have revolutionized solar cell fabrication over the past decades due to their affordability, high efficiency, and simple design structure. Although the apparent defect-tolerant characteristics of these cells offer revolutionary advances in optoelectronic technologies through various fabrication techniques, developing HP thin films into high-performance devices is often quite complex. This complexity arises from the careful selection and fabrication techniques of their transport layers and HP absorber layer. In this project, we aimed to develop a perovskite solar cell (PSC) design suitable for both solution deposition and a novel chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method for the HP layer using MAPbI3. Using an n-i-p structure, we determined that the nature of the electron transport layer heavily affected the surface coverage of the solution-deposited HP films. We tested both ALD-deposited TiO2 and spin-coated SnO2 compact layers and found that the SnO2 films offered better surface coverage with the HP layer. We expect this design to be compatible with our CVD-grown HP films as well, allowing us to compare device performance.