Improving the Morphology Stability of Spiro-OMeTAD Films for Enhanced Thermal Stability of Perovskite Solar Cells

To guarantee a long lifetime of perovskite-based photovoltaics, the selected materials need to survive relatively high-temperature stress during the solar cell operation. Highly efficient n–i–p perovskite solar cells (PSCs) often degrade at high operational temperatures due to morphological instability of the hole transport material 2,2′,7,7′-tetrakis (N,N-di-p-methoxyphenyl-amine)9,9′-spirobifluorene (Spiro-OMeTAD). We discovered that the detrimental large-domain spiro-OMeTAD crystallization is caused by the simultaneous presence of tert-butylpyridine (tBP) additive and gold (Au) as a capping layer. Based on this discovery and our understanding, we demonstrated facile strategies that successfully stabilize the amorphous phase of spiro-OMeTAD film. As a result, the thermal stability of n–i–p PSCs is largely improved. After the spiro-OMeTAD films in the PSCs were stressed for 1032 h at 85 °C in the dark in nitrogen environment, reference PSCs retained only 22% of their initial average power conversion efficiency (PCE), while the best target PSCs retained 85% relative average PCE. Our work suggests facile ways to realize efficient and thermally stable spiro-OMeTAD containing n–i–p PSCs.