Engineering Next Generation Hole Transport Layers for Lead Free Perovskite Solar Cells Exceeding 23% Power Conversion Efficiency

Abstract

Lead-based halogenated perovskite solar cells have been mainly studied recently; however, these cells have two major drawbacks: lead toxicity and device instability, which limit their commercialization. In this paper, we investigate, theoretically, the effect of temperature on the PV performance of a lead-free perovskite solar cell (PSC) based on formamidinium tin iodide (HC(NH2)2SnI3) in the configuration: FTO/WS2/HC(NH2)2SnI3/Cu2O/Au. Three inorganic materials (CuSCN, MoO3 and NiO) and three other organic materials (Spiro-OMeTAD, P3HT and D-PBTTT-14) were used as hole transport layers (HTL) and are also tested under temperature effect. Simulations showed that the introduction of CuSCN, Cu2O, MoO3 and NiO as (HTL) materials leads to a remarkable efficiency of 23.24% up to 389K which reflects the resistivity of these cells at such a high temperature. Substitution of the back contact layer metal by Pt, Ni and Pd metals can maintain this fixed efficiency, and among these alternatives Platinum may be the best candidate since it is both cheaper and non-toxic.