Temperature Effects on the Photovoltaic Performance of Planar Structure Perovskite Solar Cells

Temperature effects of CH3NH3PbI3 perovskite solar cells having simple planar architecture were investigated on the crystal structure and photovoltaic performance. The obvious changes in the CH3NH3PbI3 crystal structure were found by varying the temperature as a consequence to the augmentation in lattice parameters and expansion of the unit cell. The expansion of the crystal gave a serious influence on the performance of the solar cells, where the differences in the coefficients of the thermal expansion (CTEs) together with the lattice mismatch between TiO2 and perovskite materials might cause interfacial defects responsible for the deterioration in the photovoltaic performance. Interestingly, the hysteresis in the cubic phase is very small because of the less distorted angles of the CH3NH3PbI3 structure against the temperature fluctuation.