Copper iodide as inorganic hole conductor for perovskite solar cells with different thickness of mesoporous layer and hole transport layer

This study is the first to report the preparation of Copper iodide (CuI) thick films by means of convenient airbrush process and their application as inorganic hole transport layers (HTL) in organo-lead halide perovskite-based solar cells. CuI thick films exhibit high conductivity, wide-band-gap and solution-processable. Organo-lead halide perovskite solar cells with different thickness of mesoporous layers and CuI hole transport layers were fabricated. Performance of the cells were mainly controlled by the thickness of TiO2 mesoporous layers. Under optimized conditions, a power conversion efficiency of 5.8% has been achieved with short-circuit current density JSC of 22.3 mA/cm2, open-circuit voltage VOC of 614 mV and fill factor of 42%. However, the VOC remains low in comparison with the state of the art perovskite-based solar cells, which is attributed to the high recombination in CuI devices as determined by impedance spectroscopy.