Single-step Chemical Vapor Deposition of Methyl Ammonium Lead Halide Perovskite for p-i-n Solar Cells

Metal halide perovskite solar cells being one of the fastest emerging technologies for renewable energy still has to become more industry friendly in a way that will allow using it for thin film modules or tandems with conventional silicon devices. The simplest way to achieve this is to use chemical vapor deposition (CVD) technique for tandem production. In this work, we show a method for a single step production of MAPbI3 films in a simple two-zone CVD reactor from lead diacetate and methyl-ammonium iodide powders. Obtained films show highly ordered cubic MAPbI3 phase with a thickness of 400-500 um, good photoluminescence response and absorption band edge similar to spin-coated film. We used those films to produce p-i-n solar cells with ITO/NiO/MAPbI3/C60/Cu structure. The best cell showed negligible 0.23 % PCE right after the manufacturing but significantly improved to 5.5 % PCE after 8 hours of storage in the dark. The main limiting factor affecting the efficiency is low current density, which we attribute to non-optimized growth conditions; however, our approach is a first step to a single step CVD deposition of MAPbI3 on any type of substrates including texturized silicon subcells for better overall efficiency.