Publication date: 8th January 2019
Thanks to their high stability, good optoelectronic and extraordinary electrochromic properties, tungsten oxides are among the most valuable yet underexploited materials for energy conversion applications. To date, a few attempts have been made to integrate tungsten oxides into perovskite solar cells. The PCE of solar cells employing both thermally evaporated [1] and solution-processed [2] amorphous WOx as either HTL or ETL, respectively, could not overcome 9%. To raise the performance, several elaborate strategies have been developed. Here, the colloidal one-dimensional carved nanocrystals of reduced tungsten trioxide (WO3-x) film, integrated for the first time, as a hole-transporting layer (HTL) into CH3NH3PbI3 perovskite solar cells with a planar inverted device architecture, is presented. Importantly, the good charge- transfer/conduction properties, ligand removal procedure and interfacial modification all contributed to the achievements of the highest PCE for WO3x HTL based solar cell processed at room temperature. The use of such preformed nanocrystals guarantees the facile solution-cast-only deposition of a homogeneous WO3-x thin film at room temperature, allowing achievement of the highest power conversion efficiency ever reported for perovskite solar cells incorporating raw and un-doped tungsten oxide based HTL.