Effects of Organic Cation Additives on the Fast Growth of Perovskite Thin Films for Efficient Planar Heterojunction Solar Cells

The film quality of organometallic halide perovskite is very crucial to the performance of planar heterojunction solar cells. Previous methods have generally required a long-time and complex process to control the crystal growth for obtaining a compact and smooth perovskite film. Here, we demonstrate a novel method of growing the high-quality films via a simple and rapid process. Organic cations are used as additives in the solution of CH3NH3PbI3 (MAPbI3), which plays a key role in the film-forming process. These organic cations can enhance the film-forming ability and do not lead to a residue in the film end-product. On the basis of these characteristics, highly efficient perovskite solar cells with a simple planar heterojunction structure were achieved. Because the additives can simplify and accelerate the fabrication process and have no chance to induce any negative effect on the device, they will have a large potential in the production of various high-quality perovskite films and low-cost, large-scale, and high-performance devices.