Room-Temperature-Grown amorphous Indium-Tin-Silicon-Oxide thin film as a new electron transporting layer for perovskite solar cells

We report the amorphous quaternary oxide, indium-tin-silicon-oxide (ITSO), thin film as a new electron-transport layer (ETL) for perovskite solar cells (PSCs). ITSO thin films are grown by magnetron co-sputtering indium-tin-oxide (ITO) and silicon oxide (SiO₂) on commercial transparent conducting oxide (TCO) thin films at room temperature. As Si content increases (0–53.8 at%) the optical bandgap increases by approximately 1.3 eV and the electrical resistivity increases by six orders mainly because of the carrier concentration decrease. Consequently, the ITSO electronic structure depends largely on Si content. PSCs employing ITSO thin films as ETLs were fabricated to evaluate the effect of Si content on device performances. Si content influenced the shunt and series resistance. The optimized device was obtained using an ITSO film with 33.0 at% Si content, exhibiting 14.50% power-conversion efficiency. These results demonstrate that ITSO films are promising for developing efficient PSCs by optimizing the growing process and/or In/Sn/Si/O compositions. This approach can reduce PSC manufacturing process time and costs if ITO and ITSO are grown together by continuous sequential sputtering in a dual gun (ITO and SiO₂) chamber.