Scalable Screen-Printed TiO 2 Compact Layers for Fully Printable Carbon-Based Perovskite Solar Cells.

Fully printable carbon-based perovskite solar cells (C-PSCs) represent some of the most promising perovskite solar cell (PSC) architectures. Highly scalable, stable, and low in cost—these devices consist of a TiO₂ compact layer (C-TiO₂) and three sequentially screen-printed mesoporous layers of TiO₂, ZrO₂, and carbon, through which perovskite is infiltrated. While there has been remarkable progress in optimizing and scaling up deposition of mesoporous layers and perovskite, few publications have focused on optimizing C-TiO₂. In this work, we investigate the potential for substituting commonly used spray pyrolysis with more easily scaled screen-printing. It was found that when comparing layers of similar thickness, 1 cm² devices fabricated with printed C-TiO₂ exhibited similar power conversion efficiency (PCE) to those fabricated with spray pyrolysis. In contrast, thicker-printed C-TiO₂ led to lower efficiency. The influence of TiCl₄ treatment on the quality of produced compact layers was also examined. This proved beneficial, mostly in the printed films, where a champion PCE of 13.11% was attained using screen-printed, TiCl₄ treated C-TiO₂. This work proves that screen-printing is a viable replacement for spray pyrolysis in C-PSCs fabrication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]