The Effect of Contact Material on Perovskite Solar Cell Efficiency

Perovskite solar cells have made tremendous improvements since it was first reported on 2009. Its efficiency has increased from 3% to an outstanding 22.1% in less than eight years. Due to its rapid increase in efficiencies and low cost fabrication process, the perovskite solar cell technology was named as one of the biggest scientific breakthroughs in the year of 2013 by Science. In the Perovskite solar cell structure, poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT:PSS) is usually used on top of ITO as the conducting electrode.
In this work, we show our study on how the efficiency of the Perovskite solar cells depend on the conductivity and work function of PEDOT:PSS. A series of PEDOT:PSS solutions with different conductivity and work function were used to make the Pervoskite solar cells. The Kelvin Probe technique was used to measure the work function of the polymer film and the Keithley sourcemeter was used to measure current-voltage characteristics of the solar cells were. Our results help us gain a better understanding of Pervoskite solar cells and give us insight on how to improve the efficiency of those solar cells.