Photonic photoanode for macroporous perovskite solar cells

Organic-inorganic metal halide perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have reached power conversion efficiencies over 20%. Two archetypal PSC architectures are reported in the literature: mesoporous and planar PSCs. In the former one, a mesoporous TiO2 scaffold is incorporated into the cell. Because sizes of the mesopores are typically small compared to wavelengths of visible light, the scaffold barely scatters light.

In this work, we propose to periodically structure a porous TiO2 scaffold incorporating pores with diameters comparable to wavelengths of visible light thanks to the use of colloidal crystal templating fabrication method. The resulting TiO2 scaffold filled with perovskite will constitute an opal-like photonic crystal incorporated in the solar cell, which will strongly interact with light.

Through Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) simulations, we demonstrate that the photonic crystal induces resonances that can be exploited to modulate light harvesting in the macroporous TiO2 layer. Sunlight absorption by the PSC will be presented and discussed with dependency of pore sizes and number of opal layers.