Feasibility study of atmospheric-pressure dielectric barrier discharge treatment on CH3NH3PbI3 films for inverted planar perovskite solar cells

A facile surface treatment of the CH3NH3PbI3 film is conducted using a portable dielectric barrier discharge device inside a nitrogen-filled glove box. DBD treatment can promote the surface crystallization of the CH3NH3PbI3 film, increase the conductivity of CH3NH3PbI3 film, and manifest efficient defect passivation. In addition, DBD treatment can remove surface N-containing fragments of perovskite film to produce a lead-rich surface, which not only affords self-passivation effect but also increases the interactions at the perovskite/fullerene interface. Benefitting from the reduced defect density at the perovskite interface, the DBD-treated perovskite film can enable a ∼12.5% enhancement in power conversion efficiency of the derived doped PC61BM-based perovskite solar cells. Such enhancement is mainly contributed from the improvement of open circuit voltage (from 0.885 to 0.922 V) and fill factor (0.698 to 0.759). Detailed optimization of the DBD treatment is carefully investigated in this study. © 2018 Elsevier Ltd