An internally photoemitted hot carrier solar cell based on organic-inorganic perovskite

Abstract Hot carriers and their extraction have been demonstrated in organic-inorganic perovskites under transient condition. Unfortunately, there was no real device to harvest hot carriers under steady-state illumination yet due to the indistinguishable hot and cooled carriers in conventional sandwiched structure. Here we report a new designed architecture based on internally photoemitted hot carrier (IPHC) solar cell, whose active CH3NH3PbI3 layer is outside of the two collection electrodes with configuration of CH3NH3PbI3/Au/TiO2/FTO. Herein, the photoexcited hot electrons transfer ballistically from CH3NH3PbI3 layer to TiO2 via thin gold layer for electron collection. For the first time, the device we fabricated using this novel structure produces short circuit current of 5422 μA·cm-2 under one sun (100 mW·cm-2) illumination which demonstrates the efficient harvesting of hot electrons under steady-state sunlight illumination. The considerable efficient photocurrent showed by this new design opens an alternative approach for light-to-electricity conversion.