Abstract

Organic-inorganic halide perovskites have rapidly grown as favorable materials for photovoltaic applications, but accomplishing long-term stability is still a major research problem. This work demonstrates a new insight on instability and degradation factors in CH3NH3PbI3 perovskite solar cells aging with time in open air. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) has been used to investigate the compositional changes caused by device degradation over the period of 1000 hrs. XPS spectra confirm the migration of metallic ions from the bottom electrode (ITO) as a key factor causing the chemical composition change in the perovskite layer besides the diffusion of oxygen. XPS results are in good agreement with the crystallographic marks. Glow discharge optical emission spectrometry (GD-OES) has also been performed on the samples to correlate the XPS results. Based on the experimental results, fundamental features that account for the instability in the perovskite solar cell is discussed.

Details

Title
Instability in CH3NH3PbI3 perovskite solar cells due to elemental migration and chemical composition changes
Author
Ahmad, Zubair 1 ; Mansoor, Ani Najeeb 1 ; Shakoor, R A 1 ; Alashraf, Abdulla 1 ; Al-Muhtaseb, Shaheen A 2   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Soliman, Ahmed 3 ; Nazeeruddin, M K 4 

1  Center for Advanced Materials (CAM), Qatar University, Doha, Qatar 
2  Department of Chemical Engineering, College of Engineering, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar 
3  Gas Processing Center (GPC), Qatar University, Doha, Qatar 
4  Group for Molecular Engineering of Functional Materials, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland 
Pages
1-8
Publication year
2017
Publication date
Nov 2017
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
e-ISSN
20452322
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-15841-4
ProQuest document ID
1963432527
Copyright
© 2017. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.