Moderate temperature deposition of RF magnetron sputtered SnO2-based electron transporting layer for triple cation perovskite solar cells

• Published in: Scientific reports Vol. 13; no. 1; p. 9100
• Main Authors: Zakaria, Y., Aïssa, B., Fix, T., Ahzi, S., Mansour, S., Slaoui, A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 05-06-2023; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 639/301; 639/4077; 639/624; 639/766; 639/925; Electron transport; Engineering Sciences; Humanities and Social Sciences; Materials; multidisciplinary; Photovoltaic cells; Photovoltaics; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Solar cells; Thin films
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-35651-1

The perovskite solar cells (PSCs) are still facing the two main challenges of stability and scalability to meet the requirements for their potential commercialization. Therefore, developing a uniform, efficient, high quality and cost-effective electron transport layer (ETL) thin film to achieve a stable PSC is one of the key factors to address these main issues. Magnetron sputtering deposition has been widely used for its high quality thin film deposition as well as its ability to deposit films uniformly on large area at the industrial scale. In this work, we report on the composition, structural, chemical state, and electronic properties of moderate temperature radio frequency (RF) sputtered SnO
2
. Ar and O
2
are employed as plasma-sputtering and reactive gases, respectively. We demonstrate the possibility to grow a high quality and stable SnO
2
thin films with high transport properties by reactive RF magnetron sputtering. Our findings show that PSC devices based on the sputtered SnO
2
ETL have reached a power conversion efficiency up to 17.10% and an average operational lifetime over 200 h. These uniform sputtered SnO
2
thin films with improved characteristics are promising for large photovoltaic modules and advanced optoelectronic devices
.