Excellent Intrinsic Long‐Term Thermal Stability of Co‐Evaporated MAPbI<sub>3</sub> Solar Cells at 85 °C
Herlina Arianita Dewi, Jia Li, Hao Wang, Bhumika Chaudhary, Nripan Mathews, Subodh G. Mhaisalkar, Annalisa Bruno
Abstract
Abstract Thermal stability is a critical criterion for assessing the long‐term stability of perovskite solar cells (PSCs). Here, it is shown that un‐encapsulated co‐evaporated MAPbI 3 (TE_MAPbI 3 ) PSCs demonstrate remarkable thermal stability even in an n‐i‐p structure that employs Spiro‐OMeTAD as hole transport material (HTM). TE_MAPbI 3 PSCs maintain over ≈95% and ≈80% of their initial power conversion efficiency (PCE) after 1000 and 3600 h respectively under continuous thermal aging at 85 °C. TE_MAPbI 3 PSCs demonstrate remarkable structural robustness, absence of pinholes, or significant variation in grain sizes, and intact interfaces with the HTM, upon prolonged thermal aging. Here, the main factors driving TE_MAPbI 3 stability are assessed. It is demonstrated that the excellent TE_MAPbI 3 thermal stability is related to the perovskite growth process leading to a compact and almost strain‐stress‐free film. On the other hand, un‐encapsulated PSCs with the same architecture, but incorporating solution‐processed MAPbI 3 or Cs 0.05 (MA 0.17 FA 0.83 ) 0.95 Pb(I 0.83 Br 0.17 ) 3 as active layers, show a complete PCE degradation after 500 h under the same thermal aging condition. These results highlight that the control of the perovskite growth process can substantially enhance the PSCs thermal stability, besides the chemical composition. The TE_MAPbI 3 impressive long‐term thermal stability features the potential for field‐operating conditions.