Antisolvents in Perovskite Solar Cells: Importance, Issues, and Alternatives

Organic-inorganic metal halide perovskite solar cells are emerging as potential solar energy harvesting tools and can be a tough competitor to already matured solar cell technologies. The success of perovskite solar cells is attributed to superior optoelectronic properties of perovskites, feasible synthesis process, and low fabrication cost. Though perovskite solar cells confront perovskite film quality related issues, such as rough surface, pinholes (which result in poor device performance) at the initial stages, many techniques have been developed to improve the perovskite film quality. Among these developed techniques, the antisolvent treatment method is certainly one of the most successful techniques till date. Antisolvent treatment increases the nucleus density during film formation to produce uniform and pinhole-free perovskite film, which facilitates improved solar cell efficiency, low hysteresis, and stability. Interestingly, many of the best efficiency perovskite solar cells till date have been produced by the antisolvent treatment. This review discusses the fundamentals of antisolvent treatment, various aspects of antisolvent application on perovskite film, different issues with antisolvent usage, and alternatives techniques for perovskite film quality improvement.