Since carbon material was used as the electrode of perovskite solar cell (PSC), it has attracted wide attention because of its excellent thermal stability and low cost. However, serious charge recombination at the perovskite/carbon interface can lead to poor performance of carbon-based holeless PSCs. In this work, highly efficient and stable carbon-based PSC uses NiO nanoparticles as hole transport layer, which effectively promotes the separation and extraction of photogenerated carriers and inhibits the charge recombination at the perovskite layer/carbon electrode interface, thus improving the performance of the device. By optimizing the concentration of NiO nanoparticles, the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of carbon-based PSC reaches 13.6%. This work shows adding NiO nanoparticles between the perovskite film and the carbon electrode efficiently improve the hole extraction and the performance of PSC. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.