Efficient Lead-Free Solar Cells Based on Hollow {en}MASnI3 Perovskites

Weijun Ke, Konstantinos Stoumpos, Ioannis Spanopoulos, Lingling Mao, Michelle Chen, Michael R. Wasielewski, Mercouri G. Kanatzidis*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

251 Scopus citations

Abstract

Tin-based perovskites have very comparable electronic properties to lead-based perovskites and are regarded as possible lower toxicity alternates for solar cell applications. However, the efficiency of tin-based perovskite solar cells is still low and they exhibit poor air stability. Here, we report lead-free tin-based solar cells with greatly enhanced performance and stability using so-called "hollow" ethylenediammonium and methylammonium tin iodide ({en}MASnI3) perovskite as absorbers. Our results show that en can improve the film morphology and most importantly can serve as a new cation to be incorporated into the 3D MASnI3 lattice. When the cation of en becomes part of the 3D structure, a high density of SnI2 vacancies is created resulting in larger band gap, larger unit cell volume, lower trap-state density, and much longer carrier lifetime compared to classical MASnI3. The best-performing {en}MASnI3 solar cell has achieved a high efficiency of 6.63% with an open circuit voltage of 428.67 mV, a short-circuit current density of 24.28 mA cm-2, and a fill factor of 63.72%. Moreover, the {en}MASnI3 device shows much better air stability than the neat MASnI3 device. Comparable performance is also achieved for cesium tin iodide solar cells with en loading, demonstrating the broad scope of this approach.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)14800-14806
Number of pages7
JournalJournal of the American Chemical Society
Volume139
Issue number41
DOIs
StatePublished - Oct 18 2017

Funding

This work was supported in part by the ANSER Center, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, under Award DE-SC0001059. This work made use of the EPIC facility (NUANCE Center-Northwestern University), which has received support from the MRSEC program (NSF DMR-1121262) at the Materials Research Center, and the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center (EEC-0118025/ 003), both programs of the National Science Foundation; the State of Illinois; and Northwestern University.

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Chemistry
  • Biochemistry
  • Catalysis
  • Colloid and Surface Chemistry

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