Nickel sulphide-carbon composite hole transporting material for (CH3NH3PbI3) planar heterojunction perovskite solar cell
Journal article, 2018

The present work reports about the low-cost inorganic nickel sulphide-carbon composite synthesized using the simple chemical method and to be used as hybrid hole extraction and as a counter electrode material for perovskite (CH 3 NH 3 PbI 3 )-based solar cells (PSCs). The structural analysis confirms the existence of nickel sulphide (NiS) crystalline phase composed of small-sized crystallites. The optimal bandgap values of the prepared perovskite (1.51 eV) and NiS (3.71 eV) materials found to be favorable in achieving the active absorbing and hole extraction properties in PSCs. The surface morphology of the nickel sulphide materials is found to be highly dependent on the NiS-carbon composition. The current density-voltage (J-V) results of the fabricated perovskite solar cells with nickel sulphide-carbon composite hole transporting layer (HTL) suggests that incorporation of commercial carbon paste into the nickel sulphide nanoparticles tends to promote the charge carrier transporting ability an d resulted in yielding high power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 5.20%, when compared to that of the bare NiS (1.87%). The results show that this nickel sulphide-carbon composite can serve as an efficient dual role as an HTL to transport holes and as a conductive counter electrode for the planar heterojunction PSCs with the structure FTO/compact-TiO 2 /porous-TiO 2 /perovskite/NiS-carbon. So, nickel sulphide-carbon composite can be considered as an efficient replacement for the other unstable HTMs and high-cost metal counter electrodes used in PSCs.

Hole extraction layer

Doctor blade method

Nickel sulphide

Nickel sulphide-carbon composite

Author

Selvakumar Pitchaiya

Coimbatore Institute of Technology

Muthukumarasamy Natarajan

Coimbatore Institute of Technology

Agilan Santhanam

Coimbatore Institute of Technology

Venkatraman Madurai Ramakrishnan

Coimbatore Institute of Technology

Vijayshankar Asokan

Chalmers, Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Energy and Material

Pavithrakumar Palanichamy

Coimbatore Institute of Technology

Balasundaraprabhu Rangasamy

PSG College of Technology

Senthilarasu Sundaram

University of Exeter

Dhayalan Velauthapillai

Western Norway University of Applied Sciences

Materials Letters

0167-577X (ISSN) 18734979 (eISSN)

Vol. 221 283-288

Subject Categories

Materials Chemistry

Other Chemistry Topics

Composite Science and Engineering

DOI

10.1016/j.matlet.2018.03.161

More information

Latest update

6/11/2018