Spatial Atmospheric Pressure Atomic Layer Deposition of Tin Oxide as an Impermeable Electron Extraction Layer for Perovskite Solar Cells with Enhanced Thermal Stability

Despite the notable success of hybrid halide perovskite-based solar cells, their long-term stability is still a key-issue. Aside from optimizing the photoactive perovskite, the cell design states a powerful lever to improve stability under various stress conditions. Dedicated electrically conductive diffusion barriers inside the cell stack, that counteract the ingress of moisture and prevent the migration of corrosive halogen species, can substantially improve ambient and thermal stability. Although atomic layer deposition (ALD) is excellently suited to prepare such functional layers, ALD suffers from the requirement of vacuum and only allows for a very limited throughput. Here, we demonstrate for the first time spatial ALD-grown SnO<i>_x</i> at atmospheric pressure as impermeable electron extraction layers for perovskite solar cells. We achieve optical transmittance and electrical conductivity similar to those in SnO<i>_x</i> grown by conventional vacuum-based ALD. A low deposition temperature of 80 °C and a high substrate speed of 2.4 m min^–1 yield SnO<i>_x</i> layers with a low water vapor transmission rate of ∼10^–4 gm^–2 day^–1 (at 60 °C/60% RH). Thereby, in perovskite solar cells, dense hybrid Al:ZnO/SnO<i>_x</i> electron extraction layers are created that are the key for stable cell characteristics beyond 1000 h in ambient air and over 3000 h at 60 °C. Most notably, our work of introducing spatial ALD at atmospheric pressure paves the way to the future roll-to-roll manufacturing of stable perovskite solar cells