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All-perovskite tandem solar cells with 24.2% certified efficiency and area over 1 cm2 using surface-anchoring zwitterionic antioxidant

Nature Energy volume 5, pages 870–880 (2020)Cite this article

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Abstract

Monolithic all-perovskite tandem solar cells offer an avenue to increase power conversion efficiency beyond the limits of single-junction cells. It is an important priority to unite efficiency, uniformity and stability, yet this has proven challenging because of high trap density and ready oxidation in narrow-bandgap mixed lead–tin perovskite subcells. Here we report simultaneous enhancements in the efficiency, uniformity and stability of narrow-bandgap subcells using strongly reductive surface-anchoring zwitterionic molecules. The zwitterionic antioxidant inhibits Sn2+ oxidation and passivates defects at the grain surfaces in mixed lead–tin perovskite films, enabling an efficiency of 21.7% (certified 20.7%) for single-junction solar cells. We further obtain a certified efficiency of 24.2% in 1-cm2-area all-perovskite tandem cells and in-lab power conversion efficiencies of 25.6% and 21.4% for 0.049 cm2 and 12 cm2 devices, respectively. The encapsulated tandem devices retain 88% of their initial performance following 500 hours of operation at a device temperature of 54–60 °C under one-sun illumination in ambient conditions.

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Fig. 1: Characterization of mixed Pb–Sn narrow-bandgap perovskite films with FSA.
Fig. 2: Charge dynamics and uniformity of Pb–Sn narrow-bandgap perovskite films with FSA.
Fig. 3: PV performance of mixed Pb–Sn narrow-bandgap solar cells.
Fig. 4: PV performance of monolithic all-perovskite tandem solar cells.
Fig. 5: Atmospheric and operating stability of all-perovskite tandem solar cells.

Data availability

All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the published article and its Supplementary Information and Source Data files. Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

This work is financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (61974063, 61921005), Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (14380168), National Key R&D Program of China (2018YFB1500102), Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (BK20190315), Basic Research Program of Frontier Leading Technologies in Jiangsu Province, Program for Innovative Talents and Entrepreneur in Jiangsu and Thousand Talent Program for Young Outstanding Scientists in China. The work of Y.H., M.W. and E.H.S. is supported by US Department of the Navy, Office of Naval Research (N00014-20-1-2572). V.Y. and M.I.S. acknowledge the support of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Ke Xiao, Renxing Lin, Qiaolei Han.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Artificial Functional Materials, College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China

    Ke Xiao, Renxing Lin, Qiaolei Han, Jin Wen, Yuan Gao, Xin Luo, Yurui Wang, Han Gao, Jia Zhu & Hairen Tan

  2. School of Electronics Science and Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China

    Ke Xiao, Xin Luo & Jun Xu

  3. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Yi Hou, Mingyang Wei & Edward H. Sargent

  4. School of Physics, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China

    Zhenyuan Qin & Chunfeng Zhang

  5. Research School of Electrical, Energy and Materials Engineering, College of Engineering and Computer Science, The Australian National University, Canberra, NSW, Australia

    Hieu T. Nguyen

  6. Department of Chemistry, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada

    Vishal Yeddu & Makhsud I. Saidaminov

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Contributions

H.T. conceived and directed the overall project. K.X., R.L. and Q.H. fabricated all the devices and conducted the characterization. Y.H., M.I.S., V.Y., X.L., Z.Q., Y.W., J.W., H.G., C.Z., J.X. and J.Z. helped with the device fabrication and material characterization. M.W. performed the steady-state/transient PL and transient absorption measurements. H.T.N. performed the EL and PL imaging characterization. Y.G. performed the optical modelling of tandem devices. H.T. and K.X. wrote the draft, and E.H.S., M.I.S. and Y.H. improved the manuscript. All authors read and commented on the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hairen Tan.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–29, Tables 1–6 and ref. 1.

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Supplementary Data

Normalized PV parameters of solar cells shown in Supplementary Fig. 28.

Source data

Source Data Fig. 3

PV parameters of solar cells shown in the Fig. 3b inset and Fig. 3e.

Source Data Fig. 4

PV parameters of solar cells shown in the Fig. 4g inset.

Source Data Fig. 5

Normalized PV parameters of solar cells shown in Fig. 5a.

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Xiao, K., Lin, R., Han, Q. et al. All-perovskite tandem solar cells with 24.2% certified efficiency and area over 1 cm2 using surface-anchoring zwitterionic antioxidant. Nat Energy 5, 870–880 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-020-00705-5

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