Incorporation of green solvent for low thermal budget flower-like Copper(I) Iodide (?-CuI) for high-efficiency solar cell

• Main Authors: Aliyaselvam O.V., Arith F., Mustafa A.N., Chelvanathan P., Azam M.A., Amin N.
• Other Authors: 57224919906
• Format: Article
• Published: Springer 2024
• Subjects: Additives; Budget control; Ethanolamines; Fabrication; Film preparation; Morphology; Perovskite; Perovskite solar cells; Solvents; Tin oxides; Annealing temperatures; Greener solvents; High conductivity; High-efficiency solar cells; Hole transporting layers; Indium doped tin oxides; Low thermal budget; Monoethanolamine; Oxide substrates; Solar-cell applications; Copper compounds
• Institution: Universiti Tenaga Nasional

High conductivity, density, and uniform Copper(I) Iodide (CuI) as Hole Transporting Layer (HTL) was prepared directly on an Indium-doped Tin Oxide (ITO) substrate. A new green solvent, namely Monoethanolamine (MEA) with no additional additives procedures was presented for the preparation, though the fabricated CuI films produced a notable result of HTL for perovskite solar cell (PSC) applications. The growth of ?-CuI can be formed at the lower temperature of 350��C, thereby lowering the fabrication cost since a high temperature involved fabrication method incurs large costs. The optimized annealing temperature of 80��C has attained a pristine morphology structure with high conductivity of 28.38 S/cm. Besides, the SCAPS-1D simulation was used to construct an efficient CuI-based PSC using the experimental data collected of fabricated CuI films and attained a PCE of 21.37%, FF of 82.77%, J sc of 22.74�mA/cm2 and V oc of 1.14�V. Interestingly, this is the first report proposing the use of MEA as a CuI solvent, demonstrating the effective combination of solvent and annealing temperature can yield a desirable CuI structure. With that, HTL films can be prepared in simple, inexpensive, and rapid, thus reducing the cost of solar cell production. � 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.