Passivation of iodine vacancies of perovskite films by reducing iodine to triiodide anions for high-performance photovoltaics

Inverted perovskite solar cells (PSCs) exhibit great potential in large-scale fabrication due to the low-temperature manufacturing process and low cost compared to normal PSCs. However, defects at the surface and grain boundaries (GBs) of perovskite films, such as iodine vacancies, lead to low efficiency and poor stability. Herein, we report a strategy to passivate the defects in situ with tetrabutylammonium chloride (TABCl). Both the surface defects and GB defects are passivated after perovskite film growth. Moreover, TABCl modifies iodine vacancies by reducing I2 to iodide ions, leading to a decrease in charge recombination in the films and enhanced device performance. The power conversion efficiency (PCE) of devices increases from 18.52% to 20.36 % by TBACl modification, and TBACl also reduces the Voc loss in the PSCs. Meanwhile, TBACl enhances the UV light stability of devices tested by continuous UV light irradiation due to the decreased defects by TBACl. The PSCs could maintain over 90% PCE under continuous UV light irradiation for 450 min. This work not only presents a method to effectively passivate the defects in situ including the surface defects and GB defects but also demonstrates a novel strategy to modify the iodine vacancies by the reducibility of TBACl. In addition, the reducibility of TBACl suppresses the degradation of perovskite films, leading to improved stability.