Electrosprayed TiO2nanoporous hemispheres for enhanced electron transport and device performance of formamidinium based perovskite solar cells

Titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanoporous hemispheres (NHSs) with a radius of ∼200 nm are fabricated by electrospraying a hydrothermally synthesized TiO2 nanoparticle (NP) suspension solution. The resulting TiO2 NHSs are highly porous, which are beneficial to the infiltration of perovskites and provide a larger contact area, as building blocks to construct a mesoporous TiO2 layer for FA0.81MA0.15Pb(I0.836Br0.15)3 based perovskite solar cells (PSCs). By varying the TiO2 NHS collecting period (15 s, 30 s, 60 s and 90 s) during the electrospraying process, the performance of PSCs changes with different TiO2 NHS distribution densities. The optimized PSC employing TiO2 NHSs (60 s) exhibits a photovoltaic conversion efficiency (PCE) as high as 19.3% with a Jsc of 23.8 mA cm−2, a Voc of 1.14 V and a FF of 0.71. Furthermore, the PSC possesses a reproducible PCE value with little hysteresis in its current density–voltage (J–V) curves. The small perturbation transient photovoltage (TPV) measurement reveals a longer free carrier lifetime within the TiO2 NHS based PSC than that in the TiO2 NP based PSC, and the time of flight (TOF) photoconductivity measurement shows that charge mobilities in this system are also enhanced. These characteristics make TiO2 NHSs a promising electron transport material for efficient photovoltaic devices.