To Greatly Reduce Defects via Photoannealing for High-Quality Perovskite Films

The performance of perovskite solar cells (PSCs) depends on the crystallization of the perovskite layer. Herein, we demonstrate an effective photoannealing (PA) process by a halogen lamp. During the PA process, on the one hand, the lower energy photon, that is, near IR up to ∼1015 nm photon, drives the crystallization of the perovskite film, similar to the conventional thermal annealing (TA). On the other hand, the higher energy photon of PA can excite the trapped carriers and release the space charges, thus leading to an ideal perovskite layer with better crystallinity and lower density of defect when compared to that of TA. A maximum power conversion efficiency (PCE) has been obtained to be 20.41% in the CH3NH3PbI3-based planar PSCs based on PA because of the increase of Jsc and Voc, much higher than the control device based on the conventional TA with a maximum PCE of 18.08%. Therefore, this result demonstrates that PA is an effective method to promote the device performances and reduce the fabrication cost, which provides a potential approach for the commercial application of perovskite devices.