Front Cover: Tuning the Amount of Oxygen Vacancies in Sputter-Deposited SnO x films for Enhancing the Performance of Perovskite Solar Cells (ChemSusChem 18/2018)

The Font Cover shows a SnO x thin film deposited through sputtering with oxygen vacancies to be used as electron transporting layer (ETL) in perovskite solar cells (PSCs). The role of oxygen vacancies was found to be crucial for engineering the electrical and optical properties of the SnO x film. This research demonstrates a facile approach for creating different amounts of oxygen vacancies in SnO x films using in-situ substrate heating by sputtering deposition. The work demonstrates manipulation of the conduction-band position of the SnO x film by tuning the oxygen vacancy to achieve favorable energy alignment between the ETL and perovskite layer for higher energy conversion efficiency of PSCs. These results demonstrate that introducing oxygen vacancies into SnO x films can benefit the device performance. More information can be found in the Full Paper by Ali et al. on page 3096 in Issue 18, 2018 ( DOI: 10.1002/cssc.201801541 ).