Defect suppression and energy level alignment in formamidinium-based perovskite solar cells

Abstract The vast majority of high-performance perovskite solar cells (PSCs) are based on a formamidinium lead iodide (FAPbI3)-dominant composition. Nevertheless, the FA-based perovskite films suffer from undesirable phase transition and defects-induced non-ideal interfacial recombination, which significantly induces energy loss and hinders the improvement of device performance. Herein, we employed 4-fluorophenylmethylammonium iodide (F-PMAI) to modulate surface structure and energy level alignment of the FA-based perovskite films. The superior optoelectronic films were obtained with reduced trap density, pure α-phase FAPbI3 and favorable energy band bending. The lifetime of photogenerated charge carriers increased from 489.3 ns to 1010.6 ns, and a more “p-type” perovskite film was obtained by the post-treatment with F-PMAI. Following this strategy, we demonstrated an improved power conversion efficiency of 22.59% for the FA-based PSCs with an open-circuit voltage loss of 399 mV.