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Dry Transfer Printed Hole Transport Layer for Hysteresis-Free Colloidal Quantum Dot Solar Cells

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Abstract

Colloidal quantum dot (CQD) solar cells have drawn a lot of attention because of their potential for bandgap engineering, which enables broad and powerful absorption in the wavelength of sunlight, and low-cost process based on the solution phase production. However, the interfacial problems resulting from the heterojunction structure containing electron and hole transport layers cause a hysteresis phenomenon that weakens the device stability. We used the dry-transfer technique to implement a hole transport layer (HTL) with enhanced interfacial properties in devices. This approach is highly reproducible and allows for precise thickness control of the HTL. It also uses substantially less environmentally harmful organic solvents for the ligand exchange process than those required by the previous layer-by-layer (LbL) deposition technique. Additionally, about 400 nm thick CQD film could be deposited without the ligand exchange process, and a power conversion efficiency of 10% with minimized hysteresis was achieved using this method. Moreover, by improving the interfacial properties over the traditional LbL approach, it was feasible to lower the charge transfer resistance related to the device's hysteresis by a factor of up to four or more.

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All data are available from the corresponding authors on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported the Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials (KIMM) NK242C and NK243H project and by the international collaborative R&D program (No. 0000895) funded by the Korea Institute for Advancement of Technology (KIAT).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Nano-Mechanics, Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials (KIMM), 156, Gajeongbuk-ro, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon, 34103, Republic of Korea

    Hyung Cheoul Shim, Areum Kim, Hye-Mi So & Seungmin Hyun

  2. Department of Nanomechatronics, University of Science and Technology (UST), Daejeon, 34113, Republic of Korea

    Seungmin Hyun

  3. Department of Semiconductor and Applied Physics, Mokpo National University, 1666, Yeongsan-ro, Muan-gun, Jeollanam-do, 58554, Republic of Korea

    Jung Hoon Song

  4. Department of Energy Science and SIEST, Sungkyunkwan University, 2066, Seobu-ro, Jangan-gu, Suwon, Gyeonggi-do, 86582, Republic of Korea

    Sohee Jeong

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  1. Hyung Cheoul Shim
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Shim, H.C., Song, J.H., Kim, A. et al. Dry Transfer Printed Hole Transport Layer for Hysteresis-Free Colloidal Quantum Dot Solar Cells. Int. J. of Precis. Eng. and Manuf.-Green Tech. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40684-023-00594-5

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