Efficient Hybrid Solar Cells Based on Meso-Superstructured Organometal Halide Perovskites¶
Why this mattered¶
This paper mattered because it turned organometal halide perovskites from an unstable sensitizer in liquid-electrolyte dye-sensitized cells into the active material of a solid-state photovoltaic device. The key result was not only the reported 10.9% power conversion efficiency, unusually high for an emerging solution-processed solar absorber in 2012, but the device architecture that produced it: a perovskite-coated mesoporous scaffold paired with an organic hole conductor. By replacing the liquid electrolyte and achieving high open-circuit voltage, the work made perovskites look less like a marginal variant of dye-sensitized solar cells and more like a new class of thin-film semiconductor photovoltaics.
The most paradigm-shifting observation was the strong performance on mesoporous alumina, an insulating scaffold. In conventional dye-sensitized logic, the mesoporous oxide was expected to collect electrons; alumina could not do that. Its success implied that the perovskite itself was not merely a light absorber injecting charge into TiO₂, but could also support electronic transport through the film. That changed the conceptual model of the material: perovskites began to be treated as genuine semiconductors with useful charge-transport properties, not just molecular-like sensitizers attached to an oxide surface.
After this paper, the field had a credible route to high-efficiency, low-temperature, solution-processed solar cells using simple precursor chemistry and thin-film device concepts. Subsequent breakthroughs, including planar perovskite cells, mixed-halide and mixed-cation compositions, interface passivation, long carrier-diffusion-length measurements, and tandem architectures, built on the idea that the perovskite layer could serve as the central photovoltaic semiconductor. The rapid rise of perovskite solar-cell efficiencies in the following decade traces directly to that shift in framing.
Abstract¶
Perovskite Photovoltaics For many types of low-cost solar cells, including those using dye-sensitized titania, performance is limited by low open-circuit voltages. Lee et al. (p. 643 , published online 4 October; see the Perspective by Norris and Aydil ) have developed a solid-state cell in which structured films of titania or alumina nanoparticles are solution coated with a lead-halide perovskite layer that acts as the absorber and n-type photoactive layer. These particles are coated with a spirobifluorene organic-hole conductor in a solar cell with transparent oxide and metal contacts. For the alumina particles, power conversion efficiencies of up to 10.9% were obtained.
Related¶
- cite → A low-cost, high-efficiency solar cell based on dye-sensitized colloidal TiO2 films — The perovskite meso-superstructured solar cell builds on Grätzel and O'Regan's dye-sensitized TiO2 architecture by replacing the dye/electrolyte system with a solid hybrid perovskite absorber.
- cite → Organometal Halide Perovskites as Visible-Light Sensitizers for Photovoltaic Cells — The 2012 perovskite solar-cell paper follows Kojima et al.'s 2009 claim that organometal halide perovskites can act as visible-light sensitizers in photovoltaic cells.
- cite → Polymer Photovoltaic Cells: Enhanced Efficiencies via a Network of Internal Donor-Acceptor Heterojunctions — The meso-superstructured perovskite device invokes the donor-acceptor heterojunction concept used in polymer photovoltaics to explain efficient charge separation.
- cite ← Long-Range Balanced Electron- and Hole-Transport Lengths in Organic-Inorganic CH 3 NH 3 PbI 3 — The transport-length paper investigates why the meso-superstructured organometal halide perovskite solar cells achieved high efficiency despite thin absorber layers.
- cite ← Electron-Hole Diffusion Lengths Exceeding 1 Micrometer in an Organometal Trihalide Perovskite Absorber — The diffusion-length study builds on meso-superstructured perovskite solar cells by explaining their high efficiency through long electron-hole transport lengths.
- cite ← Compositional engineering of perovskite materials for high-performance solar cells — Perovskite compositional engineering builds on meso-superstructured organometal halide perovskite solar cells as an early high-efficiency device architecture.
- cite ← Sequential deposition as a route to high-performance perovskite-sensitized solar cells — Burschka et al. cite Lee et al. as the meso-superstructured perovskite solar-cell architecture that their sequential deposition method improves.
- enables ← A low-cost, high-efficiency solar cell based on dye-sensitized colloidal TiO2 films — Dye-sensitized mesoporous TiO2 solar cells established the mesostructured oxide scaffold later reused for perovskite-sensitized hybrid solar cells.
- enables ← Polymer Photovoltaic Cells: Enhanced Efficiencies via a Network of Internal Donor-Acceptor Heterojunctions — Bulk donor-acceptor heterojunction photovoltaics enabled the hybrid-solar-cell concept of interpenetrating charge-separating networks in solution-processed devices.