Improvement of CH3NH3PbI3 thin film using the additive 1,8-diiodooctane for planar heterojunction perovskite cells

The thin-film quality is critical for obtaining high-performance perovskite solar cells (PSCs). The additive 1,8-diiodooctane (DIO) was used to control the morphology and structure of CH3NH3PbI3 perovskite thin films, and planar heterojunction (PHJ) PSCs with an architecture of ITO/PEDOT: PSS/CH3NH3PbI3/PCBM/Al was fabricated. It was found that the DIO played an important role on CH3NH3PbI3 thin-film quality and the performance of PHJ-PSCs. With the optimal volume ratio of 2%, the compact and uniform high-quality CH3NH3PbI3 thin films with enhanced crystallinity and less roughness were achieved, resulting in the great improvement of power conversion efficiency (PCE) from about 4.5% to over 9.0%. The research results indicate that the additive DIO is a simple and effective method to produce high-quality perovskite thin film and accordingly develop high-performance PHJ-PSCs.