Ambient air processed highly oriented perovskite solar cells with efficiency exceeding 23% via amorphous intermediate

The preparation of perovskite solar cells (PSCs) in ambient air can effectively reduce the production cost and is more conducive to commercial production. However, ambient air fabrication of perovskite film always causes rough surface and nonuniform coverage which increase non-radiative recombination in PSCs. In this work, we adopted an amorphous intermediate strategy in lead iodide (PbI2) film to prepare the oriented perovskite film under ambient air condition. This amorphous intermediate formed by the interaction force between cesium iodide (CsI) and PbI2, which promotes perovskite phase inversion in perovskite precursor film and finally the perovskite grains grow perpendicular to the substrate in the ambient air. As a result, this ambient air processed-PSCs with the perovskite film passivated with butylammonium iodide (BAI) obtained a power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 23.46%, which is equivalent to that of two-step preparation in glovebox. Furthermore, the PSC maintains 85% of its initial efficiency under more than 1000 h of continuous illumination and processes a recoverable PCE at temperatures below 65 °C under photothermal cycling stress.