Enhanced Silver Nanowire Composite Window Electrode Protected by Large Size Graphene Oxide Sheets for Perovskite Solar Cells

Abstract

Despite the outstanding features of high transmittance and low sheet resistance from silver nanowire (Ag NW) based transparent electrodes, their applications in perovskite solar cells (PVSCs) as window electrodes encounter significant obstacles due to the stability issue brought by the corrosion of halogen species from perovskite layer. In this study, we used large size graphene oxide (LGO) sheets as the protective barrier for bottom Ag NW nano-network. Contributed by the LGO with average size of 60 μm, less GO sheet was necessary for forming the fully covered protective barrier with fewer cracks, which consequently improved the optical transparency and anticorrosive ability of the composite electrode compared to the one from relatively small size GO. Our experiments demonstrated the composite electrode of Ag NW/LGO. The glass substrate exhibited transmittance of 83.8% and 81.8% at 550 nm before and after partial reduction, which maintained 98.4% and 95.1% average transmittance (AVT) of the pristine Ag NW electrode. Meanwhile, we utilized the steady hot airflow to assist the fast solvent evaporation and the uniform GO film formation on Ag NW electrode. Before the application of composite electrode in organic-inorganic hybrid perovskite solar cells, the operational stability of composite electrodes from different sizes of GO with perovskite film fabricated on top were characterized under continuing external bias and light irradiation. Experimental results indicate that the Ag NW electrode protected by LGO could maintain original resistance for more than 45 h. Finally, the PVSC fabricated on Ag NW/LGO based composite electrode yielded a power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 9.62%, i.e., nearly 85% of that of the reference device fabricated on the commercial indium-tin oxide (ITO) glass. Our proposed low temperature and solution processed bottom electrode with improved optical transparency and operational stability can serve as the very beginning layer of optoelectronic devices, to promote the development of low cost and large area fabrication perovskite solar cells.