Enhancement of perovskite-based solar cells employing core-shell metal nanoparticles

Journal article

Recently, inorganic and hybrid light absorbers such as quantum dots and organometal halide perovskites have been studied and applied in fabricating thin-film photovoltaic devices because of their low-cost and potential for high efficiency. Further boosting the performance of solution processed thin-film solar cells without detrimentally increasing the complexity of the device architecture is critically important for commercialization. Here, we demonstrate photocurrent and efficiency enhancement in meso-superstructured organometal halide perovskite solar cells incorporating core-shell Au@SiO2 nanoparticles (NPs) delivering a device efficiency of up to 11.4%. We attribute the origin of enhanced photocurrent to a previously unobserved and unexpected mechanism of reduced exciton binding energy with the incorporation of the metal nanoparticles, rather than enhanced light absorption. Our findings represent a new aspect and lever for the application of metal nanoparticles in photovoltaics and could lead to facile tuning of exciton binding energies in perovskite semiconductors.

Authors: Zhang, W; Saliba, M; Stranks, S; Sun, Y; Shi, X

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: American Chemical Society
• Journal: Nano Letters
• Volume: 13
• Issue: 9
• Pages: 4505–4510
• Publication date: 2013-08-15
• Acceptance date: 2013-08-13
• DOI: 10.1021/nl4024287
• ISSN: 1530-6992 and 1530-6984
• Pmid: 23947387
• Language: English
• Keywords: calcium compounds; oxides; solutions; quantum dots; metal nanoparticles; sunlight; SBTMR; silicon dioxide; titanium; semiconductors; gold; solar energy