Organic-inorganic hybrid perovskites have gained considerable attention during the past two years and have revolutionized the prospects of emerging photovoltaic technologies, in forms of both light harvesters and hole transport materials. These organic-inorganic hybrid perovskite compounds adopt the ABX3 perovskite structure, which consists of a network of corner-sharing BX6 octahedra, where the B atom is a divalent metal cation (typically Ge2+, Sn2+ or Pb2+) and X is a monovalent anion (typically Cl−, Br−, I−); the A cation is selected to balance the total charge and it can be a Cs+ or a small molecular species. Such perovskites afford several important features including excellent optical properties that are tunable by controlling the chemical compositions, ambipolar charge transport, and long electron and hole diffusion lengths. Solar cells based on MeNH3PbI3 perovskites have gained enormous significance and reached a power conversion efficiency close to 19%, approaching the efficiency of commercialized c-Si solar cells. Because of the toxicity of Pb however the search is on for lead free alternatives. In this talk we report on the chemistry of tin-based perovskite compounds their chemical and physical properties as well as phase transitions. We will present results on Pb-free solar cell cells with good efficiency and stability. We will also present recent data on the design and fabrication of hybrid solar cells: i) tin-based perovskites for the hole conducting layer while dye molecules is the sensitizer and ii) tin-based perovskite as sensitizer and organic molecule as hole conductor.

Inorganic chemistry, solution processed solar cells, and the era of perovskites

249th National Meeting (2015)

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