Buried Interface Passivation of Perovskite Solar Cells by Atomic Layer Deposition of Al2O3

Despite having long excited carrier lifetimes and high mobilities in hybrid halide perovskite materials, conventional (n-i-p) devices exhibit significant interfacial nonradiative recombination losses that are little understood but limit the radiative efficiency and the overall open-circuit potential. In this Letter, we reveal that the process of spiro-OMeTAD coating on perovskite gives rise to buried defect states, which are detrimental to the devices’ operational stability. We subsequently report a method to passivate these deleterious buried defect states by atomic layer deposition of Al2O3 through controlled precursor dosages on fully functional devices. The process results in notable improvements in the overall device performance, but the underlying root-cause analysis is what we essentially aimed to elucidate here. The reported passivation technique results in (a) an increase in the efficiency primarily due to an increase of VOC by ∼60–70 mV and consequently (b) enhanced photoluminescence and higher electroluminescence quantum efficiency and (c) overall device operational (MPPT) stability under ambient and, exclusively, even under high vacuum (>300 h) conditions, which is otherwise challenging.