Strategic advantages of reactive polyiodide melts for scalable perovskite photovoltaics

Despite tremendous progress in efficiency and stability, perovskite solar cells are still facing the challenge of upscaling. Here we present unique advantages of reactive polyiodide melts for solvent- and adduct-free reactionary fabrication of perovskite films exhibiting excellent quality over large areas. Our method employs a nanoscale layer of metallic Pb coated with stoichiometric amounts of CH3NH3I (MAI) or mixed CsI/MAI/NH2CHNH2I (FAI), subsequently exposed to iodine vapour. The instantly formed MAI(3(L)) or Cs(MA,FA)I-3(L) polyiodide liquid converts the Pb layer into a pure perovskite film without byproducts or unreacted components at nearly room temperature. We demonstrate highly uniform and relatively large area MAPbI(3) perovskite films, such as 100 cm(2) on glass/fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) and 600 cm(2) on flexible polyethylene terephthalate (PET)/indium tin oxide (ITO) substrates. As a proof-of-concept, we demonstrate solar cells with reverse scan power conversion efficiencies of 16.12% (planar MAPbI(3)), 17.18% (mesoscopic MAPbI(3)) and 16.89% (planar Cs(0.05)MA(0.2)FA(0.75)PbI(3)) in the standard FTO/c(m)-TiO2/perovskite/spiro-OMeTAD/Au architecture.