Highly efficient sandwich structured Perovskite solar cell using PEDOT: PSS in room ambient conditions Monika Srivastava a , Karan Surana a , Shruti Singh b , P.K. Singh a , Ram Chandra Singh a,⇑ a Material Research Laboratory, Department of Physics, School of Basic Sciences and Research, Sharda University, Greater Noida U.P.-201310, India b Department of Env. Science, School of Basic Sciences and Research, Sharda University, Greater Noida U.P.-201310, India article info Article history: Received 16 December 2019 Received in revised form 4 March 2020 Accepted 6 March 2020 Available online xxxx Keywords: Perovskite HTM PEDOT: PSS Sandwich structure abstract In recent years, Perovskite solar cells (PSC) have garnered immense popularity in the field of photo- voltaics, due to its efficiency comparable to silicon solar cells and its ease of processing makes it cost effective. Owing to the vast scope of organic–inorganic metal halides in the field of Perovskite Solar Cell, we have designed and fabricated a sandwiched methyl ammonium lead iodide (CH 3 NH 3 PbI 3 ) based PSC using PEDOT: PSS as hole transport material (HTM) in room ambient condition. The PSC with archi- tecture of FTO/TiO 2 /Perovskite/PEDOT: PSS/Pt, show a high efficiency of 15.24% at one sun condition. Owing to the fact that most of PSC are unstable at room ambient, our PSC affirms a stability of two hours, at room environment. In recent years, for the first time such high efficiency of PSC is reported in sandwich structure in ambient conditions. Since it is completely based on solution processing with no usage of vacuum deposition, it is very cost effective. Ó 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 3rd International Con- ference on Science and Engineering of Materials. 1. Introduction With rapid industrialization and continuous growth in popula- tion, the energy consumption is bound to increase. Due to the diminishing supply of fossil fuels and adverse climate changes, the search for a feasible source of renewable energy is in progress. The solar energy as an abundant and promising source outstands all other forms of renewable energy. Due to this in the past two decades photovoltaic technologies have gained a lot of attention. There are different generations of solar cells which have been developed with the passage of time. The first generation is of Sili- con solar cells, which is highly commercialized solar cell due to its high photo conversion efficiency (PCE) and stability. But it lacks the ease of processing and cost effectiveness. This caused the develop- ment of second generation solar cells which comprises of thin films and vapor deposited semiconductor substances like cadmium tel- luride (CdTe) and copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS). The third generation solar cells include the organic solar cells and dye sensi- tized solar cells (DSSC). The new entrant in the field is Perovskite Solar cells (PSC). Perovskite solar cells provide a vast arena for future research owing to its high efficiency, ease of processing, cost effectiveness and high absorbance in the visible range of spectrum. In the current scenario the efficiency of perovskites boosted upto 23%, as compared to 3.9%, in year 2009 [1–3]. The photovoltaic properties of a perovskite solar cell is mainly dependent on its synthesis, the electron transport layer, hole trans- port layer and the fabrication process. Based on structure the PSC is categorized as planar and inverted. The perovskite, as an active layer is sandwiched between electron transport layer (ETL) and hole transport layer (HTL). The n-i-p and p-i-n structure represents the planar and inverted structure respectively. The methyl ammo- nium lead halide perovskite possess excellent photovoltaic proper- ties including low exciton binding energy, broad absorption spectrum in visible range. The tuning of the band gap energies of the ETL, perovskite as a sensitizer and HTL should be optimized in such a way such that it causes efficient separation of the charge carriers i.e. electrons and holes. Thus, giving rise to required amount of photocurrent [4–6]. The architecture of the perovskite solar cell which is used here is a sandwich structure having the perovskite as absorption layer between the electron conducting and hole conducting layer. Different types of organic polymer HTMs have been used giving good efficiencies, but these HTMs have to be necessarily cost effective and thermally stable [7–9]. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2020.03.329 2214-7853/Ó 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 3rd International Conference on Science and Engineering of Materials. ⇑ Corresponding author. E-mail address: rcsingh@sharda.ac.in (R. Chandra Singh). Materials Today: Proceedings xxx (xxxx) xxx Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Materials Today: Proceedings journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/matpr Please cite this article as: M. Srivastava, K. Surana, S. Singh et al., Highly efficient sandwich structured Perovskite solar cell using PEDOT:PSS in room ambi- ent conditions, Materials Today: Proceedings, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2020.03.329