Solar Energy 209 (2020) 79–84

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Solar Energy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/solener

Optimizing the working mechanism of the CsPbBr3-based inorganic

perovskite solar cells for enhanced efficiency
Saad Ullah a, Ping Liu b, Jiaming Wang a, Peixin Yang a, Linlin Liu a, Shi-E. Yang a,
Haizhong Guo a, Tianyu Xia a, Yongsheng Chen a, *
a
Key Laboratory of Materials Physics of Ministry of Education, School of Physics and Microelectroics, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou 450052, China
b
School of Electric and Information Engineering, Zhongyuan University of Technology, Zhengzhou 450007, China

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Recently, inorganic perovskite solar cells (PSCs) based on CsPbBr3 have triggered incredible interest due to the
CsPbBr3 demonstrated excellent stability against thermal and high humidity environmental conditions. However, the
Band offset power conversion efficiency (PCE) of the CsPbBr3-based PSCs is still lower than that of the organic-inorganic
CsPbIBr2
hybrid one, because of the large band gap and serious charge recombination at the interface or inside the de­
Bilayer absorption scenario
vice. Here, the working mechanism of the devices with normal n-i-p planar structure is modeled and investigated
using SCAPS 1D simulation software. The simulation results state that the proper band structure of PSCs is crucial
to carrier separation and transport. The high interface recombination, originated from the large band offsets of
the electron transport material (ETM)/absorber and absorber/hole transport material (HTM) respectively, can be
effectively diminished with the continuous gradient junction design of the absorber, and a PCE of 11.58% is
obtained with a high open-circuit voltage (VOC) of 1.68 V. Moreover, by building a heterojunction bilayer ab­
sorption scenario of CsPbIBr2/CsPbBr3 and employing ZnOS and Cu2ZnSnS4 films as the ETM and HTM
respectively, the PCE of PSCs is further increased to 15.89%, caused mainly by the enhancement in short-current
density (JSC). Moreover, reducing the interface defect density is also very important to improve the performance
of PSCs. These results will provide theoretical guidance for improving the performance of the CsPbBr3-based
PSCs.

1. Introduction
In recent years, the advances of all organic-inorganic hybrid perov­
skites have drawn tremendous attention in the photovoltaics community
due to their outstanding photoelectric properties, including high ab­
sorption coefficients, low exciton binding energies, long carrier diffusion
lengths, high carrier mobilities, and tunable bandgaps (Lee et al., 2012;
Stranks et al., 2013; Xiao et al., 2017; Shi et al., 2017, 2018). Within the
past decade, the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of the perovskite
solar cells (PSCs) witnessed a dramatic improvement from 3.8% (Kojima
et al., 2009) to 25.2% (https://www.nrel.gov/pv/insights/assets/pdfs/
cell-pv-eff-emergingpv.pdf). Despite the rapid development in PCE, the
intrinsic volatility and thermal instability of the organic components
hinder the commercialization of organic-inorganic hybrid PSCs (Juarez-
Perez et al., 2016, 2018; Shan et al., 2019). Replacing the A-site organic
ions with inorganic ions (such as Cs+) is an effective solution to the
instability issue of PSCs. And among the Cs-based inorganic perovskites,
CsPbBr3 shows outstanding stability against thermal and high humidity
environmental conditions (Chen et al., 2018; Duan et al., 2019; Liang
et al., 2017), and is emerging as one of the most promising candidates in
the field of photovoltaic, especially for fabricating tandem solar cells.
The carrier mobility of CsPbBr3 single crystal is up to 2000 cm2V− 1s− 1,
higher than 77.9 cm2V− 1s− 1 for nanosheet films (Song et al., 2017; Yang
et al., 2018). Hodes et al. (Kulbak et al., 2015) first confirmed the stable
fabrication of CsPbBr3 PSCs with a promising PCE of 5.95% using Spiro-
OMeTAD (2,2′ ,7,70-tetrakis(N,N-p-dimethoxy-phenylamino) − 9,90-
spirobifl-uorene) as hole transport material (HTM). Liang et al. (Liang
et al., 2016) replaced the traditional metal electrode with carbon,
yielding a champion PCE of 6.7% in ambient environment. Wang’s
group (Wang et al., 2018) fabricated high quality CsPbBr3 films using a
novel SCG (solvent-controlled growth) method and obtained a high PCE
of 9.81%. Tang’s group (Zhao et al., 2019) performed interfacial engi­
neering on CsPbBr3-based solar cells, boosting the efficiency to 10.6%.
Tong et al. (Tong et al., 2019) suggested a phase transition induced (PTI)

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: chysh2003@zzu.edu.cn (Y. Chen).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.solener.2020.09.003
Received 16 June 2020; Received in revised form 17 August 2020; Accepted 2 September 2020
Available online 8 September 2020
0038-092X/© 2020 International Solar Energy Society. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
S. Ullah et al.
technique by utilizing the derivative phases, to fabricate high-quality
CsPbBr3 films and succeeded in boosting the recorded PCE of n-i-p
structure PSCs up to 10.91%. Table S1 displays a summary of the device
architecture and performance of the previously reported CsPbBr3-based
PSCs.
However, the PCE of the CsPbBr3-based PSCs is still lower than that
of the organic-inorganic hybrid one, because of the large band gap (2.3
eV) and serious charge recombination at the interface or inside the de­
vice. To further enhance the performance of the CsPbBr3-based PSCs, it
is necessary to design the proper band structure to improve carrier
separation and transport and reduce the charge recombination. For this
purpose, device simulation is employed for providing deep insight into
exploring the relationship between material properties and the perfor­
mance of the device (Fu et al., 2015; Wu et al., 2016; Ho-Baillie et al.,
2019; Ma et al., 2017; Minemoto and Murata, 2014, 2015). Here, we
employed a Solar Cell Capacitance Simulator-one dimension (SCAPS-
1D, ver.3.3.07), developed by the University of Gent Belgium, for the
modeling of PSCs. The standard AM1.5G illumination was introduced to
examine the effects of interface properties, such as the band offset and
interface defect density, on the photovoltaic performance of PSCs. The
article will provide useful guidance on optimum design for processing
high-performance CsPbBr3-based PSCs in the future.
2. Device simulation parameters
The structure and energy level diagrams of the PSCs for the simu­
lation analysis is FTO/ETM/absorber/HTM/Au, as shown in Fig. S1, and
the parameters of the device are summarized in Table S2. For the
reference PSCs, TiO2, Spiro-OMeTAD and CsPbBr3 are used as the
electron transport material (ETM), HTM and absorber, respectively. The
defects in the three layers are all set to be in the neutral single distri­
bution, and the defect energy level is located in the center of the
bandgap. The defect density (Nt,bulk) of CsPbBr3 is calculated using the
following relation,
Nt,bulk = 1/(τσ Vth )
Where τ is charge carrier lifetime, σ (10− 15 cm2) is capture cross-section
of electron/hole, and Vth (107 cm/s) is the thermal velocity of electron/
hole respectively. The value of τ is set to 10 ns, and the mobility of
electron and hole is 10 cm2V− 1s− 1, following the literatures (Liu et al.,
2019; Li et al., 2017; Haruta et al., 2019). The values used for the
interface defects are as follows: Defect type is neutral and density (Nt,
13
interface) is 1 × 10 cm− 3, energetic distribution is Gaussian, charac­
teristic energy is 0.1 eV, located above the top of valence band EV at 0.6
eV. We have taken a constant illumination of 1000 W/m2 at AM 1.5G
and a constant temperature at 300 K to run the simulation. The ab­
sorption coefficient (α) calculated using the following equation,
( )1/2
α = Aα hν⋅Eg
Where the pre-factor value Aα is 105 for both TiO2, ZnOS, Spiro-
OMeTAD and Cu2ZnSnS4, and 3 × 105 for CsPbIBr2 and CsPbBr3.
Using SCAPS-1D, we have calculated short-circuit current density (JSC),
VOC, Fill Factor (FF) and PCE.
3. Results and discussion
The band offset between ETM/absorber and absorber/HTM layers
plays a vital role in the carrier recombination at the interface, which
affects the value of VOC (Minemoto and Murata, 2015; Zhou et al.,
2016). Electron affinity (χ ) refers to the energy difference between the
free electron energy level of vacuum and the bottom energy level of
conduction band (EC). The band offsets of EC and EV (valence band) at
ETM/absorber and absorber/HTM interfaces are defined using ΔEC
(ΔEC = χ ETM − χ absorber) and ΔEV (ΔEV = (χ absorber + Eg,absorber) − (χ HTM
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Solar Energy 209 (2020) 79–84
+ Eg,HTM)), respectively. The band offsets at the interfaces can be
adjusted by varying χ absorber of the absorber and keeping Eg constant in
simulation. The impact of the χ absorber on the JSC, VOC, FF and PCE of the
cells is depicted in Fig. 1. The enhanced performance is obtained for the
devices with χ absorber of 3.5–3.7 eV. Fig. 2 exhibits the energy band di­
agrams of the PSCs under short-circuit condition with χ absorber. When
low value (3.3 eV) of χ absorber is implemented, a high cliff with value of
ΔEC = 0.7 eV is formed at the ETM/absorber interface, and a low cliff is
simultaneously observed at the absorber/HTM interface. With the in­
crease of χ absorber, ΔEC decreases and ΔEV increases, and at χ absorber =
3.6 eV, ΔEC and ΔEV are comparable. The cliff does not impede photo-
generated electron and hole flow toward front and back electrodes
respectively, and JSC is almost constant with increasing χ absorber as
shown in Fig. 1. The activation energy (Ea) for carrier recombination is
associated with χ absorber. Ea,front (represented by Eg,absorber-ΔEC) at ETM/
absorber interface increases with the increasing in χ absorber, but the Ea,
back (Eg,absorber-ΔEV) at absorber/HTM interface decreases. Both of them
are lower than Eg,absorber, suggesting that the interface recombination is
mainly responsible for the recombination mechanism of the device,
which directly correlates with VOC. Fig. 3 shows the variation of
recombination current at interface (Jinterface) and absorber bulk (Jbulk) of
PSCs with forward bias. Jbulk caused by Shockley-Read-Hall recombi­
nation mechanism is lower than Jinterface, indication that interface
recombination dominates the recombination process. With the increase
of the forward bias, the built-in electric field strength in absorber de­
creases, leading to a rapid increase in Jbulk and Jinterface, especially for
the PSCs with higher ΔEC or ΔEV. Thus, VOC reaches the maximal value
at χ absorber = 3.6 eV, where Ea,front approximately equals to Ea,back. In
contrast to VOC, FF decreases with increasing χ absorber, and achieves the
minimum at χ absorber = 3.6 eV. Therefore, tuning the band offsets of PSCs
is essential to obtain a higher VOC.
The ideal situation for the optimization of photovoltaic performance
is to completely remove the cliff formed at the interface, in other words,
to maintain Ea = Eg,absorber. Previous reports in this field suggest that the
band levels of CsPbBr3 film can be tuned slightly with the homogeneous
doping of foreign ions (Li et al., 2018; Duan et al., 2018; Tang et al.,
2019; Zhao et al., 2019). So, a continuous gradient junction design
originated from the inhomogeneous doping is an effective way to reduce
the interface recombination. Qiao et al. (Qiao et al., 2019) evaluated
several guest ions in a Cs0.1FA0.9PbI3 crystal and found that the In3+ and
Sb3+ cations may be inhomogeneously doped into the perovskite, and an
optimized band alignment and a best PCE of 21.04% are achieved. Here,
three continuous gradient junction cases of absorber are investigated
and compared to the reference cell, where χ absorber changes linearity to
separately or simultaneously eliminate the band offsets of ETM/perov­
skite and HTM/perovskite. Fig. 4a displays the energy band diagrams of
PSCs with and without continuous gradient design. For the reference
cell, χ absorber is fixed at 3.3 eV. For the PSC with the gradient design of
case 1, χ absorber decreases linearly from 3.3 eV to 3.15 eV along the
thickness direction of the absorber, and ΔEV = 0.0 eV (χ absorber + Eg,
8.10 1.25
76 6.7
8.08 1.20
JSC (mA/cm 2)/V OC (V)
74 6.6
FF (%) /PCE (%)
8.06 1.15
72 6.5
8.04 1.10
70 6.4
8.02 1.05
68 6.3
8.00 1.00 66 6.2
3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 3.9
Electron affinity (eV)
Fig. 1. Impact of χ absorber on the performance of solar cells.
S. Ullah et al. Solar Energy 209 (2020) 79–84

Fig. 2. Energy band diagrams of PSCs under short-circuit condition with

different χ absorber.

Fig. 3. Variation of recombination current at interface and absorber bulk of

PSCs with forward bias.

absorber = χ HTM + Eg,HTM) at absorber/HTM interface. For case 2, χ absorber

decreases from 4.0 eV to 3.3 eV, and ΔEC = 0.0 eV (χ absorber = χ ETM) at
ETM/absorber interface. And for case 3, decreases from 4.0 eV to 3.15
eV and the cliffs at ETM/absorber and absorber/HTM interfaces are
simultaneously and completely vanished. Fig. 4b presents the current
density-voltage (J-V) characteristic of PSCs with and without continuous
gradient design, with corresponding photovoltaic parameters summa­
rized in Table 1. In comparison to the reference cell, the gradient design Fig. 4. Energy band diagrams (a), simulated J-V characteristic (b) and
of case 1 shows limited improvement in device performance after recombination current densities under short circuit condition (c) of PSCs with
eliminating the cliff at absorber/HTM interface due to the low value of and without continuous gradient junction design.
ΔEV. Fig. 4c shows the recombination current densities at interface and
absorber for PSCs with and without continuous gradient design. Jinterface
Table 1
and Jbulk are all decreases with the implementation of the gradient
Photovoltaic parameters for PSCs with and without grading design.
design of case 1. To our surprise, VOC is increased by 53% for the
gradient design of case 2 after removing the cliff at ETM/absorber ΔEC ΔEV VOC JSC (mA/ FF (%) PCE
(eV) (eV) (V) cm2) (%)
interface, because of the effective inhibition of interface recombination
as shown in Fig. 4c. This can be directly associated with the high value of Reference 0.7 0.15 1.06 8.05 76.06 6.49
Case1 0.7 0 1.06 8.08 79.65 6.83
ΔEC in the reference cell. Furthermore, due to the reduced recombina­
Case2 0 0.15 1.62 8.16 84.44 11.14
tion at the interface, JSC and FF also witnessed a slight increase in the Case3 0 0 1.68 8.17 84.40 11.58
values. As a result, the PCE of the PSC increases to 11.14%, which is
higher than the maximum efficiency reported in the literature (Tong
et al., 2019). Furthermore, with the removal of front and rear interface perovskite quantum dots (PQDs) (Zhao et al., 2019) and other semi­
cliffs, a slight improvement in PCE to 11.58% with a high open-circuit conductor quantum dots (QDs) (Duan et al., 2020; Zhou et al., 2019) can
voltage (VOC) of 1.68 V is observed for the case 3. These results sug­ set an intermediate energy level at the interfaces for carriers trans­
gest that the continuous gradient junction design can effectively portation from the perovskite which effectively raise the PCE to about
improve the performance of CsPbBr3-based PSCs. 10%. Recently, Tong et al. (Tong et al., 2019) constructed a gradient
However, in the continuous gradient junction design the theoretical bandgap architecture by introducing the perovskite derivative phase for
current limit is not increased because the Eg,absorber remains unchanged. the high efficiencies of carrier, and achieved an enhanced PCE of up to
Applying grapheme quantum dots (GQDs) (Duan et al., 2018); 10.17% with a high VOC of 1.626 V. However, the introduction of these

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S. Ullah et al. Solar Energy 209 (2020) 79–84

heterogeneous materials also brings about additional contact interfaces,

resulting in enhanced interface recombination. Thus, heterojunction
design with bilayer perovskite is investigated to improve the perfor­
mance of PSCs. It has been reported that the Eg of CsPb(I1-xBrx)3 (0 ≤ x ≤
1) films follows a linear trend of Vegard’s law by substituting the halide
ions (I− and Br− ) with each other (Jiang et al., 2018; Luo et al., 2018).
More importantly, the χ absorber increase from 3.3 eV to 3.95 eV with the
increase of I− concentration (Wang et al., 2018; Ho-Baillie et al., 2019).
Bian et al. (Bian et al., 2018) fabricated a graded bandgap structure PSCs
with a CsPbI2Br bottom cell and a CsPbI3 QD top cell, and the PCE is
improved to 14.45% with little hysteresis. Liu et al. (Zhang et al., 2018)
adopted a 3D-2D-0D architecture composed of CsPbBrI2 with different
dimensions. The VB of the CsPbBrI2 is gradually downshifted as the
dimension decreases, and the graded device (3D-2D-0D) shows the best
PCE of 12.39%. Considering that the perovskite phase stability is
decreased with the increase of I− in film (Xiang and Tress, 2019; Ma
et al., 2019), thin CsPbIBr2 film is introduced at the front of CsPbBr3
layer to constitute a bilayer absorption scenario to increase the JSC of
PSCs. In addition, CsPbIBr2 layer is protected by the behind CsPbBr3
film, which enhances the high stability of PSCs. Meanwhile, it is also
very important to choose the suitable ETM and HTM to facilitate carrier
transfer. The band offset of ETL/perovskite and HTL/perovskite is
preferably at approximately 0.2 eV to reduce energy loss and produce
more efficient PSCs (Minemoto and Murata, 2015). Thus, ZnOS (χ = 3.6
eV) (Salaha et al., 2019) and Cu2ZnSnS4 (CZTS, EV = 5.59 eV) (Zhou
et al., 2019; Kabir and Mahmood, 2019) films are utilized as ETM and
HTM respectively to decrease the height of the cliff at ETM/absorber and
absorber/HTM interfaces, inhibit interface recombination and enhance
the collection of the light-generated electrons. The specific parameters
of films are summarized is Table S2 and the band diagram of the device
is presented in Fig. 5. The light-generated electrons can be transferred
smoothly to ETM, followed with intra-band tunneling to FTO film. The Fig. 6. J–V characteristics (a) and quantum efficiency (QE) (b) of the PSCs with
performance of the improved PSCs with bilayer absorption scenario is bilayer absorption scenario.
given in Fig. 6a, and the corresponding photovoltaic parameters are
summarized in Table S3. The VOC of the PSCs is increased from 1.06 V to variations of JSC, VOC, FF, and PCE of the PSCs with different interface
1.57 V after replacing TiO2 with ZnOS, closing to the values of the defect densities upon the initial parameters in Table S2. The strong
continuous gradient design case 2 and 3 in Table 1. This suggests that impact of Nt,interface is observed in VOC, which decreases rapidly and
ZnOS film has great potential in PSCs applied as ETM. Just as it was saturates gradually with the increase of Nt,interface. As shown in Fig. 8,
supposed that the JSC increases significantly with the introduction of Jinterface increases quickly with Nt,interface, and Jbulk remains nearly ­
CsPbIBr2 for the bilayer absorption scenario, due to the increase of constant. The variation of JSC with Nt,interface is duller than that of VOC,
quantum efficiency in the wavelength range of 540–610 nm, as shown in and decreases rapidly when Nt,interface exceeds 1012 cm− 3. This is
Fig. 6b. As a result, a high PCE of 15.67% is achieved at CsPbIBr2 consistent with the change in QE, as shown in Fig. S2, where QE de­
thickness of 150 nm with VOC of 1.58 V. Furthermore, the PCE is creases sharply in the range of 300–500 nm once Nt,interface is above 1012
improved to 15.89% for the PSCs using CZTS as HTM, which is >95% of cm− 3. The trend of FF curves in Fig. 7 is almost similar to that of JSC. So,
its theoretical limits (Duan et al., 2019); due to the well-matched energy PCE of the PSCs decreases with the increase of Nt,interface. It is further
levels with the perovskite layer (Zhou et al., 2019), as shown is Fig. S1b. demonstrated in Fig. S3 that the Nt,interface of the ETM/absorber interface
In addition to the band offset, the defect density at interfaces is dominates the parameters of PSCs rather than that of the absorber/HTM
another key factor affecting the VOC of PSCs. Fig. 7 exhibits the interface, because the density of light-generated carriers is high at the
front surface and decreases exponentially with the absorber thickness. It
has been reported that the interface engineering is effective in reducing
the energy loss and recombination at interfaces to improve the overall
performance of corresponding devices (Wang et al., 2019; Liu et al.,
2019). Recently, Zhang et al. (Zhang et al., 2020) successfully applied
ionic liquids (ILs) of 1-butyl-2,3-dimethylimidazolium chloride
([BMMIm]Cl) as a modification layer to passivate the surface defects of
the perovskite film, which reduced the valence band of perovskite close
to the work function of the carbon electrode, and achieved the high ­
VOC of 1.61 V. Therefore, we believe that the performance of devices can
be further improved with the understanding of the operation mechanism
of PSCs.

4. Conclusions

Interface recombination has a significant effect on the performance

of PSCs. For the CsPbBr3-based PSCs, adjusting the band offsets at the
Fig. 5. The energy band diagram of the PSC with bilayer absorption scenario. ETM/absorber and absorber/HTM interfaces contributes to improve the

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Fig. 7. Performance parameters of PSCs with different interface defect densities.
Fig. 8. Recombination currents at interface and absorber for PSCs under short
circuit condition with different interface defect densities.
performance of the device to some extent. The VOC of the PSCs can be
increased promptly by eliminating the cliffs at interfaces completely via
continuous gradient junction design through linear regulation of
χ absorber. Of course, choosing the matched ETM and HTM is also an
effective method. It is interesting that high VOC is obtained using ZnOS
film replaced TiO2, indicating the huge potential used as ETM in PSCs.
To increase the JSC of PSCs, one perovskite layer with lower Eg is
introduced to construct the bilayer absorption scenario of CsPbIBr2/
CsPbBr3, and a PCE of 15.89% is obtained. Furthermore, decreasing the
interface defect densities, especially at the interface of ETM/absorber, is
very important for the enhancement of the properties of PSCs. These
results will offer useful guidance for designing high-efficiency CsPbBr3-
based PSCs.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
83
Solar Energy 209 (2020) 79–84
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the Program for the Innovation Team of
Science and Technology in University of Henan of China (No.
20IRTSTHN014).
Appendix A. Supplementary material
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.
org/10.1016/j.solener.2020.09.003.
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