On the efficiency of perovskite solar cells with a back reflector: effect of a hole transport material

Abstract

Organometal halide perovskites are promising, high-performance absorbers in solar cells. However, the light-harvesting performance of these devices is still limited by excessive charge carrier recombination. Charge carrier management can be improved, taking into account the transport properties of layers surrounding the absorber. In particular, the choice of an appropriate hole-transport material (HTM) could provide a path towards increasing the device performance of perovskite solar cells (PSCs). The Lambertian reflection on the cell's back-surface reflector could increase the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of PSCs as well. Taking into account these facts, we analyse the absorptance and the PCE of a perovskite thin-film solar cell with the Lambertian reflection on the cell's back-surface reflector for various organic and inorganic HTMs. The analysis is done by means of the Monte-Carlo ray tracing simulations complemented by the transfer-matrix method to account for the interference phenomenon in the local generation rate G of carriers in a thin-film multilayer system. This function is employed further in the transport equations to calculate the current–voltage characteristics of the cell. We show that wide band gap HTMs, that possess negligible absorption, increase the photocurrent in the perovskite, passing reflected photons from the back reflector. In contrast, at the same perovskite thickness the PSC gains less photocurrent with narrow band gap HTMs, where an excessive non-radiative recombination takes place. Our analysis demonstrates that the optimal thickness of the solar cell with the typical absorber CH₃NH₃PbI₃ is ∼300 nm, providing the maximal efficiency ∼18.8% for the wide band gap HTM (CuSCN) at the moderate absorber purity (the diffusion length _D ∼ 1 μm).