Understanding the impact of surface roughness: changing from FTO to ITO to PEN/ITO for flexible perovskite solar cells.

So far, single-junction flexible PSCs have been lacking in efficiency compared to rigid PSCs. Recently, > 23% have been reported. We therefore focus on understanding the differences between rigid and flexible substrates. One often neglected parameter is the different surface roughness which directly affects the perovskite film formation. Therefore, we adjust the layer thickness of SnO2 and the perovskite layers. Furthermore, we introduce a PMMA layer between the perovskite and the hole transporting material (HTM), spiro-MeOTAD, to mitigate shunting pathways. In addition, the multication perovskite Rb0.02Cs0.05FA0.77MA0.16Pb(I0.83Br0.17)3 is employed, resulting in stabilized performances of 16% for a flexible ITO substrate and 19% on a rigid ITO substrate.