Neodymium and praseodymium doped perovskite materials for highly stable CuInS2-hole-transport layer-based perovskite solar cells

Organic–inorganic hybrid perovskite (PSK) technology is a new class of solar cells which have attracted great attention due to the rapid progress in photovoltaic performance and ease of processing pathways. Herein, a novel method for the enhancement of the photovoltaic and photoelectric properties of the triple-cation Cs/MA/FA PSK layer is presented. For this purpose, two lanthanide ions, including praseodymium (Pr3+) and neodymium (Nd3+), are prepared in nanoscale and incorporated into the PSK structure as B-site dopants, which results in an improved crystallinity, prolonged charge-recombination process, and increased light harvesting while yielding higher efficiency. Moreover, inorganic copper indium sulfide (CuInS2) hole-transport layer is used instead of the high cost and organic spiro-OMeTAD to reduce production costs and enhance the device stability of PSK photovoltaics. Ultimately, a notable efficiency of 15.75% with a significant short-circuit current density of 24.54 mA cm−2 is achieved by the utilization of PSK + Pr layer in a large-scale (1.4 × 1.4 cm2) perovskite solar cell. More importantly, the devices maintain 94.3% of their initial performance for 10 day/night cycles under ambient conditions.