Compact TiO2/Anatase TiO2 Single-Crystalline Nanoparticle Electron-Transport Bilayer for Efficient Planar Perovskite Solar Cells

Electron-transport layer (ETL)/perovskite interface modification plays a key task for producing efficient planar perovskite solar cells (PSCs). In this study, interfacial modification of compact TiO2 using novel, one-step hydrothermally synthesized single-crystalline anatase (AT) titania nanoparticles (TiO2 NPs) (average diameter = 6-10 nm) was applied as an ETL bilayer to enhance the efficient charge generation and extraction and eliminate the electron-hole recombination ratio. We report here an easy approach for enhancing the performance of planar PSCs by introducing a compact TiO2/AT TiO2 NPs bilayer through spray pyrolysis (SP) deposition and spin-coating (SC) techniques, respectively. The enhanced performance of the devices with an SP-TiO2/SC-AT TiO2 NPs bilayer facilitated more efficient electron transport, charge extraction, and low interfacial recombination. Ultimately, the best device had a 17.05% power conversion efficiency resulting from the significant decrease in J-V hysteresis, presenting almost a 12% performance improvement compared to the TiO2 only layer-based counterpart. Thus, the present study provides an important advance to the design of photovoltaic devices with respect to charge transport and electron-hole recombination.