Effects of polyethylene oxide particles on the photo-physical properties and stability of FA-rich perovskite solar cells

Abstract In this paper, we use Polyethylene Oxide (PEO) particles to control the morphology of Formamidinium (FA)-rich perovskite films and achieve large grains with improved optoelectronic properties. Consequently, a planar perovskite solar cell (PSC) is fabricated with additions of 5 wt% of PEO, and the highest PCE of 18.03% was obtained. This solar cell is also shown to retain up to 80% of its initial PCE after about 140 h of storage under the ambient conditions (average relative humidity of 62.5 ± 3.25%) in an unencapsulated state. Furthermore, the steady-state PCE of the PEO-modified PSC device remained stable for long (over 2500 s) under continuous illumination. This addition of PEO particles is shown to enable the tuning of the optoelectronic properties of perovskite films, improvements in the overall photophysical properties of PSCs, and an increase in resistance to the degradation of PSCs.