Facile Synthesis of ZrO2–SiO2 Antireflective Films with Good Mechanical Performances for Perovskite Solar Cells

Antireflective (AR) films are widely applied in solar cells to reduce the reflectivity toward sunlight, thus improving the photoelectric conversion efficiency (PCE) of solar cells. However, AR films are still suffering from poor mechanical properties and low transmittance in photovoltaic applications. Herein, a ZrO₂-SiO₂ composite film with enhanced mechanical properties was successfully synthesized by a facile sol-gel method, whose pencil hardness increased from less than 6B to B compared with the pure SiO₂ film synthesized with the same alkali-catalyzed method. Moreover, the ZrO₂-SiO₂ film with a Zr/Si mole ratio (n_Zr/Si) of 0.06 exhibited a high transmittance gain (ΔT) of 3.0%, and an obvious increase (1.32%) in PCE was observed in a perovskite solar cell compared with the cell covered by a bare glass. Additionally, both the short-circuit current density (J_SC) and PCE of perovskite solar cells have a non-linear increasing relationship with the average transmittance (T_avg) of the ZrO₂-SiO₂ composite film. In this sense, this work can provide a facile way to prepare AR films effectively improving performances of solar cells.