Graphene oxide as an additive to improve perovskite film crystallization and morphology for high-efficiency solar cells.

The quality of a perovskite film has a great impact on its light absorption and carrier transport, which is vital to improve high-efficiency perovskite solar cells (PSCs). Herein, it is demonstrated that graphene oxide (GO) can be used as an effective additive in the precursor solution for the preparation of high-quality solution-processed CHNHPbI (MAIPbI) films. It is evidenced by scanning electron microscopy that the size of the grains inside these films not only increases but also becomes more uniform after the introduction of an optimized amount of 1 vol% GO.

In Situ Observation of Thermal Proton Transport through Graphene Layers.

Protons can penetrate through single-layer graphene, but thicker graphene layers (more than 2 layers), which possess more compact electron density, are thought to be unfavorable for penetration by protons at room temperature and elevated temperatures. In this work, we developed an in situ subsecond time-resolved grazing-incidence X-ray diffraction technique, which fully realizes the real-time observation of the thermal proton interaction with the graphene layers at high temperature. By following the evolution of interlayer structure during the protonation process, we demonstrated that thermal protons can transport through multilayer graphene (more than 8 layers) on nickel foil at 900 °C.

Enhanced Crystalline Phase Purity of CHNHPbICl Film for High-Efficiency Hysteresis-Free Perovskite Solar Cells.

Despite rapid successful developments toward promising perovskite solar cells (PSCs) efficiency, they often suffer significant hysteresis effects. Using synchrotron-based grazing incidence X-ray diffraction (GIXRD) with different probing depths by varying the incident angle, we found that the perovskite films consist of dual phases with a parent phase dominant in the interior and a child phase with a smaller (110) interplanar space (d) after rapid thermal annealing (RTA), which is a widely used post treatment to improve the crystallization of solution-processed perovskite films for high-performance planar PSCs. In particular, the child phase composition gradually increases with decreasing depth till it becomes the majority on the surface, which might be one of the key factors related to hysteresis in fabricated PSCs.

Interfacial electronic structures revealed at the rubrene/CHNHPbI interface.

The electronic structures of rubrene films deposited on CHNHPbI perovskite have been investigated using in situ ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy (UPS) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). It was found that rubrene molecules interacted weakly with the perovskite substrate. Due to charge redistribution at their interface, a downward 'band bending'-like energy shift of ∼0.

High-Performance Perovskite Solar Cells Engineered by an Ammonia Modified Graphene Oxide Interfacial Layer.

Unlabelled: The introduction of an ammonia modified graphene oxide (GO:NH3) layer into perovskite-based solar cells (PSCs) with a structure of indium-tin oxide (ITO)/poly(3,4-ethylene-dioxythiophene):poly(4-styrenesulfonate) (

Pedot: PSS)-GO: NH3/CH3NH3PbI3-xClx/phenyl C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM)/(solution Bphen) sBphen/Ag improves their performance and perovskite structure stability significantly. The fabricated devices with a champion PCE up to 16.11% are superior in all the performances in comparison with all the reference devices without the GO:NH3 layer.