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Metal halide perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have attracted extensive research interest for next-generation solution-processed photovoltaic devices because of their high solar-to-electric power conversion efficiency (PCE) and low fabrication cost. Although the world's best PSC successfully achieves a considerable PCE of over 20% within a very limited timeframe after intensive efforts, the stability, high cost, and up-scaling of PSCs still remain issues. Recently, inorganic perovskite material, CsPbBr, is emerging as a promising photo-sensitizer with excellent durability and thermal stability, but the efficiency is still embarrassing. In this work, we intend to address these issues by exploiting CsPbBr as light absorber, accompanied by using Cu-phthalocyanine (CuPc) as hole transport material (HTM) and carbon as counter electrode. The optimal device acquires a decent PCE of 6.21%, over 60% higher than those of the HTM-free devices. The systematic characterization and analysis reveal a more effective charge transfer process and a suppressed charge recombination in PSCs after introducing CuPc as hole transfer layer. More importantly, our devices exhibit an outstanding durability and a promising thermal stability, making it rather meaningful in future fabrication and application of PSCs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Flexible perovskite solar cells (PSCs) such as inverted PSCs are gaining increasing attention due to their wide range of potential applications, while the selection of stable, high conductivity and energy level suitable hole transport layers (HTLs) is still challenging. Here we introduce dopant-free copper phthalocyanine (CuPc) as HTL in inverted planar PSCs, and demonstrate improved photovoltaic performance and increased stability with high reproducibility and uniformity compared to the PEDOT:PSS based devices. The champion efficiency of PSCs is achieved by 15.4% on rigid substrates and 12.8% on flexible substrates, respectively. The flexible devices also exhibit excellent bending stability, retaining ∼85% of the original power conversion efficiency (PCE) after 3000 bending cycles at r = 5 mm without encapsulation. Our study provides a new strategy for fabricating cost-effective, scalable and flexible PSCs with high efficiency, little hysteresis, and excellent stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]