Light-Induced Space-Charge Accumulation Zone as Photovoltaic Mechanism in Perovskite Solar Cells.

We fabricated formamidinium lead iodide perovskite solar cell for analysis of the photovoltaic mechanism based on the interpretation of the capacitance variation under illumination. It was shown that the low-frequency capacitance increases proportional to incident light intensity, and in addition it increases proportional to absorber thickness. Furthermore, the voltage dependence of capacitance is exponential with slope 1/2 (thermal energy). We conclude that the large photovoltage and capacitance are associated with electronic accumulation zone at the interface with the metal oxide contact. While this type of accumulation capacitance is common in many devices as transistors, the perovskite solar cell shows a singular behavior in that under light the electronic carrier accumulation grows unlimited by another series capacitance, reaching values as large as 10 mF cm(-2) at one sun illumination.