News & Events

Sputtered Metal Contacts Support High-Efficiency Perovskite Solar Cells

Date: 
Wednesday, March 16, 2022 - 17:00 to 18:00
Speaker: 
Tengxiao (Alec) Ji
Affiliation: 
Department of Chemistry, University of British Columbia
Event Category: 
IDG - Inorganic Discussion Group
Host: 
Curtis Berlinguette
Location: 
Chemistry D300

IDG seminars will be held in D300 and also available on zoom this term. Please contact for zoom details.

Sputtering is a deposition technique that is widely used to produce dense, uniform, high-adhesion, and scalable thin films for optic applications and the automotive industry. Despite these advantages, sputtering is rarely considered to deposit metal contacts for perovskite solar cells (PSCs). The reason is that sputtering often damages the underlying organic layer, which leads to lower device efficiencies. Here I will report a straightforward sputtering method followed by a simple aerial post-oxidation step to repair the damaged organic layer in PSCs.1 With this step, I achieved the highest efficiency ever recorded for a single-junction PSC with sputtered metal contacts. I will show that sputtering coupled with the post-oxidation step demonstrated comparable efficiencies and higher stability relative to PSCs with metal contacts deposited through thermal evaporation, which is the common practice of the field. I will also present a complementary method to further increase PSC performance by incorporating interfacial chemical interactions between their chiral components.2 These strategies can help propel the development of commercially competitive PSCs that are both scalable and highly efficient.

(1) Ji, T.; Delima, R. S.; Dvorak, D. J.; Cao, Y.; Ren, S.; Lu, X.; Morrissey, T. D.; Ko, Y.; Kim, Y.; Berlinguette C. P. High-Efficiency Perovskite Solar Cells with Sputtered Metal Contacts. To be submitted to Nat Commun.

(2) Cao, Y.; Ji, T.; Morrissey, T. D.; Booker, E.; Dvorak, D. J.; Das, S.; Berlinguette C. P. Highly Specific Ionic Interactions on Perovskite Surfaces Improves Chemical Stability and Hole Extraction. To be submitted to J. Am.Chem. Soc.