Abstract
Perovskite bandgap tuning without quality loss makes perovskites unique among solar absorbers, offering promising avenues for tandem solar cells1,2. However, minimizing the voltage loss when their bandgap is increased to above 1.90 eV for triple-junction tandem use is challenging3,4,5. Here we present a previously unknown pseudohalide, cyanate (OCN−), with a comparable effective ionic radius (1.97 Å) to bromide (1.95 Å) as a bromide substitute. Electron microscopy and X-ray scattering confirm OCN incorporation into the perovskite lattice. This contributes to notable lattice distortion, ranging from 90.5° to 96.6°, a uniform iodide–bromide distribution and consistent microstrain. Owing to these effects, OCN-based perovskite exhibits enhanced defect formation energy and substantially decreased non-radiative recombination. We achieved an inverted perovskite (1.93 eV) single-junction device with an open-circuit voltage (VOC) of 1.422 V, a VOC × FF (fill factor) product exceeding 80% of the Shockley–Queisser limit and stable performance under maximum power point tracking, culminating in a 27.62% efficiency (27.10% certified efficiency) perovskite–perovskite–silicon triple-junction solar cell with 1 cm2 aperture area.
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The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request.
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Acknowledgements
Y.H. acknowledges support from the MOE Tier 2 grant (MOE-T2EP10122-0005), the Ministry of Education (Singapore) and the National University of Singapore Presidential Young Professorship (A-0009174-03-00 and A-0009174-02-00). This research is supported by the National Research Foundation, Singapore, and A*STAR (Agency for Science, Technology and Research) under its LCERFI program award no. U2102d2002. Y.L. acknowledges support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 12074016 and 12274009), Beijing Natural Science Foundation (Z210016) and the General Program of Science and Technology Development Project of Beijing Municipal Education Commission (KM202110005003), the Research and Development Project from the Shanxi-Zheda Institute of Advanced Materials and Chemical Engineering (2022SX-TD001). P.M.-B. acknowledges support from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Excellence Strategy-EXC 2089/1-390776260 (e-conversion) of Germany and TUM.solar in the context of the Bavarian Collaborative Research Project Solar Technologies Go Hybrid (SolTech). The authors of this paper are affiliated with the Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore (SERIS), a research institute at the National University of Singapore. SERIS is supported by the National University of Singapore, the National Research Foundation Singapore, the Energy Market Authority of Singapore and the Singapore Economic Development Board. The computational work for this article was entirely performed on the resources of the National Supercomputing Centre (NSCC), Singapore (https://www.nscc.sg). We thank M. Schwartzkopf, K. Sun, Z. Li and X. Jiang for the support of beamtime at the DESY P03 beamline.
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S.L. and Y.H. conceived the idea and designed the experiments. Y.H. directed and supervised the project. S.L. fabricated the single-junction and triple-junction solar cells. Y.L. and M.S. conducted the TEM measurements. J.L. and H.L. assisted with the middle cell fabrication. R.G. and P.M.-B. conducted the GIWAXS measurement. X.J. assisted with VOC loss and photoluminescence analysis. X.G. assisted with confocal photoluminescence measurements. R.L. assisted with the defect formation energy calculation. Y.-D.W. and X.W. assisted with the SEM measurement. Q.Z. assisted with the solar cell characterizations. C.Y. and S.Y. conducted the fabrication of silicon solar cells. S.L., Y.L., R.G., X.J. and Y.H. analysed the data and wrote the paper. All authors read and commented on the paper.
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Liu, S., Lu, Y., Yu, C. et al. Triple-junction solar cells with cyanate in ultrawide-bandgap perovskites. Nature 628, 306–312 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07226-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07226-1
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