Suppression of Ag migration by low-temperature sol-gel zinc oxide in the Ag nanowires transparent electrode-based flexible perovskite solar cells

Abstract Silver nanowires (Ag NWs) network is an excellent candidate as flexible transparent electrode applying in flexible perovskite solar cells, owing to their excellent electrical and optical properties. However, several problems including large surface roughness, chemical reaction between Ag and perovskite precursor, and migration of Ag limited the application in high performance perovskite solar cells. Aiming to solve these problems, the composite electrode combining the spray coated Ag nanowires and the low-temperature sol-gel zinc oxide was developed in this work. The optimized concentration and annealing temperature of sol-gel ZnO were 0.45 M and 150 °C. The introduction of zinc oxide with suitable concentration caused slight impact on the transmittance and sheet resistant of transparent composite electrode, and promoted mechanical and chemical stability in air relative to the pristine Ag NWs electrode. The use of the composite flexible electrode could decrease the surface roughness of the Ag NWs electrode, passivate the reaction of perovskite and silver electrode, and prevent the migration of Ag. As a consequence, the performance of the flexible device significantly improved from 8.65% to 13.11%. Under the AM 1.5G constant illumination, the optimization device has a remarkably improved stability than pristine device. This study demonstrates that spray Ag NWs as bottom electrode is suitable for flexible perovskite solar cells. Meanwhile, it's an effective method using sol-gel ZnO to construct composite electrode to promote the device performance and stability.