Study on properties of Praseodymium doped NiOx thin film as hole transport layer for perovskite solar cell /

Abstract

Hybrid organic/inorganic Perovskite Solar Cells (PSCs) have acquired tremendous consideration due to their skyrocketing solar to power conversion efficiency from 3.9% to 29% has been achieved in just one decade, with efficient photovoltaic, electrical properties and simple manufacturing process. These properties make most promising photovoltaic technologies. However, there are numerous challenges in their development process, including the need for enhanced PCE, low stability, and toxicity. In planar p-i-n structure PSC, light harvesting layer (Absorber layer) is sandwiched between electron transport layer (ETL) and hole transport layer (HTL). Performance of PSCs is heavily affected by these interfaces between the layers. In our research work, to obtain undoped NiOx and Pr-doped NiOx thin film initially, NiOx and Pr-doped NiOx sols were prepared by sol-gel method. The concentration of Praseodymium ion (Pr-ions) was varied from (0 to 6 mol% ) subsequently, sols were spun on fluorine doped tin oxide (FTO) substrate and employed as a hole transport layer for PSC and further thin film was characterized by XRD, SEM/EDX, AFM, UV-Vis, Hall effect, contact angle, and IV-curve. The formation of cubical structure of NiOx and Pr-doped NiOx thin film were identified by X-ray diffraction (XRD) having crystallite size range between 28 nm to 12 nm and elemental composition of thin film were confirmed by Energy Dispersive X-Ray Analysis (EDX). Homogenous, uniform and crack free structure of thin film were confirmed by Scanning electron microscope and atomic force microscope (AFM). UV-Vis spectroscopy (UV-Vis) were used to determine the transmittance, absorbance, and band gap of sample. Electrical property of NiOx and Pr-doped NiOx thin film were calculated by hall effect measurement system (HMS). The Current density-voltage (J-V) curves of the cell revealed the performance of the device is remarkably improved when employing 4% Pr-doped NiOx HTL based PSC has shown that 9.23% PCE, resulting in 33.57% better improvement in PCE as compared to a device utilizing undoped NiOx based HTL.