Quality management of high-efficiency planar heterojunction organic-inorganic hybrid perovskite solar cells

The energy extracted from solar radiation is the most abundant and accessible source of renewable energy, which will become progressively more important as time goes on. Solar cells are regarded as one of the most promising candidates for generating renewable clean energy. Recently, a new class of semiconducting material called organic-inorganic halide perovskite has received great attention of academia, and the record power conversion efficiency (PCE) of perovskite solar cell (PSC) rapidly increased from 3.8% in 2009 to 22.7% in late 2017 through intensive research due to some advantages as follows. 1) Excellent optoelectronic property. Perovskite materials exhibit excellent properties, including long diffusion length, high carrier mobility, and high absorption coefficient. 2) Low cost. The ingredients of perovskite materials are cheap, and PSCs can be manufactured by a solution process. 3) Tunable bandgap. Perovskite materials have highly tunable bandgap (1.2-2.2 eV), contributing to the further improvement in PCE of single junction PSCs by realizing the ideal bandgap (1.3-1.4 eV) as demonstrated by the Shockley-Queisser detailed balanced calculation. The basic architectures of PSCs are divided mainly into mesoscopic and planar heterojunction structures. Compared with the former configuration, the later configuration combined with low-temperature processable interlayers provides a method of fabricating flexible PSCs and tandem PSCs. Furthermore, the nonuse of the mesoscopic structure simplifies the structure of PSCs and reduces the cost and time of fabrication. The key requirement to achieve an efficient and reproducible planar heterojunction PSCs is that the perovskite layer should be uniform, continuous, and pinhole free to minimize shunting pathways. So, significant research effort is being devoted to the quality management of perovskite films with the goal of achieving the controllable preparation, including the optimization of their morphology (uniformity, coverage, roughness) and microstructure (grain size/distribution, texture), and the elimination of defects (voids, pinholes, grain boundaries), which influence the PSC performance directly. Especially for the one-step solution coating method, the film quality of perovskite on different planar substrates under varied deposition conditions exhibits a large difference, due to the complex crystallization process and the heightened sensitivity to environmental conditions. In this paper, the characteristics of perovskite materials, the nucleation-growth mechanism of films in the one-step solution method, and the evolution of cell structures are described briefly. The latest quality control methods of high-quality perovskite films prepared by solution method are then discussed emphatically. Finally, to provide references for the future research, the development and existing problems of PSCs are addressed and prospected.