An efficient perovskite solar cell with symmetrical Zn(ii) phthalocyanine infiltrated buffering porous Al2O3 as the hybrid interfacial hole-transporting layer.

A new Zn(ii) phthalocyanine (Pc) based low bandgap HTM is introduced for perovskite solar cells. Steady state and time-resolved photoluminescence (PL) measurements indicated an evenly matched hole extraction efficiency between sym-HTPcH and spiro-OMeTAD. On account of the low film quality and resulting high recombination, Zn(ii) Pc normally cannot work as an effective HTM. We adopted insulating Al2O3 for the infiltration of sym-HTPcH to form a hybrid interfacial buffer layer, affording perovskite solar cells (PSCs) with an average PCE value of up to 12.3%, which is a significant improvement with respect to the control cell without the meso-Al2O3 layer (4.21%) and is the highest value ever reported for Zn(ii) phthalocyanine based devices under AM1.5G standard conditions. A hysteresis test revealed that our device structure with the new HTM exhibited a balanced charge extraction behaviour.