Preparation of Nickel Oxide Nanoflakes for Carrier Extraction and Transport in Perovskite Solar Cells

Hole transport layers (HTLs) with high conductivity, charge extraction ability, and carrier transport capability are highly important for fabricating perovskite solar cells (PSCs) with high power conversion efficiency and device stability. Low interfacial recombination between the HTL and perovskite absorber is also crucial to the device performance of PSCs. In this work, we developed a three-stage method to prepare NiO(x) nanoflakes as the HTL in the inverted PSCs. Due to the addition of the nanoflake layer, the deposited perovskite films with larger grain sizes and fewer boundaries were obtained, implying higher photogenerated current and fill factors in our PSCs. Meanwhile, the downshifted valence band of the NiO(x) HTL improved hole extraction from the perovskite absorber and open-circuit voltages of PSCs. The optimized device based on the NiO(x) nanoflakes showed the highest efficiency of 14.21% and a small hysteresis, which outperformed the NiO(x) thin film as the HTL. Furthermore, the device maintained 83% of its initial efficiency after 60 days of storage. Our results suggest that NiO(x) nanoflakes provide great potential for constructing PSCs with high efficiency and long-term stability.