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Fabrication of perovskite solar cells in ambient air by blocking perovskite hydration with guanabenz acetate salt

Nature Energy volume 8, pages 1158–1167 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

The fabrication of perovskite solar cells (PSCs) in ambient air can accelerate their industrialization. However, moisture induces severe decomposition of the perovskite layer, limiting the device efficiency. Here we show that sites near vacancy defects absorb water molecules and trigger the hydration of the perovskite, eventually leading to the degradation of the material. We demonstrate that guanabenz acetate salt eliminates both cation and anion vacancies, blocking the perovskite hydration and allowing the crystallization of a high-quality film in ambient air. With guanabenz acetate salt, we prepare PSCs in ambient air with a certified efficiency of 25.08%. The PSCs without encapsulation maintain around 96% of their initial efficiency after 2,000 hours of ageing in ambient air and after 500 hours of operating at the maximum power point under simulated air mass (AM) 1.5 G solar light in a N2 atmosphere. The encapsulated devices retained 85% of their initial efficiency after 300 hours under damp heat conditions (85 °C and 85% relative humidity).

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Fig. 1: Morphology and crystallinity characterization of perovskite films.
Fig. 2: Photoelectric property characterization of perovskite films.
Fig. 3: Characterization of the interaction between perovskite and GBA.
Fig. 4: Photovoltaic performance of control and target PSCs.

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Data availability

All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the published article and its Supplementary Information. Additional data are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request. Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported partially by National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant numbers 52232008, 51972110, 52102245 and 52072121), Beijing Natural Science Foundation (2222076, 2222077), project of State Key Laboratory of Alternate Electrical Power System with Renewable Energy Sources (LAPS202114), Huaneng Group Headquarters Science and Technology Project (HNKJ20-H88), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2020MS023, 2020MS028, 2023MS042) and the NCEPU ‘Double First-Class’ and sponsored by Beijing Nova Program. We thank H. Meng (National Institute of Metrology, China) for assistance with characterizing the performance of the device, C. Guo (Tsinghua University) and M. Chen (Peking University) for helping with the spectroscopy measurements. We also thank M. Wang, X. Ding and J. Chen (North China Electric Power University) for assisting with DFT calculation and discussion.

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  1. These authors contributed equally: Luyao Yan, Hao Huang, Peng Cui.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Alternate Electrical Power System with Renewable Energy Sources, School of New Energy, North China Electric Power University, Beijing, China

    Luyao Yan, Hao Huang, Peng Cui, Shuxian Du, Zhineng Lan, Yingying Yang, Shujie Qu, Xinxin Wang, Qiang Zhang, Benyu Liu, Xiaopeng Yue, Xing Zhao, Yingfeng Li, Haifang Li, Jun Ji & Meicheng Li

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Contributions

M.L. and L.Y. conceived the idea. M.L. and P.C. guided the work as supervisors. L.Y., H.H. and P.C. did experimental designs, device fabrication and data analysis. Z.L., S.D., Y.Y. and S.Q. participated in the device fabrications and some material and device characterizations. X.W., B.L., Q.Z., Y.L and H.L. supported the measurement system construction, device fabrication, characterization and discussions. L.Y., H.H., P.C. and M.L. participated in manuscript writing and revising. X.Z., X.Y., J.J. and M.L. polished the manuscript language. All authors were involved in the discussions and approved the paper.

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Correspondence to Meicheng Li.

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Nature Energy thanks Sofia Masi, Makhsud Saidaminov and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–31, Notes 1–8 and Tables 1–10.

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Supplementary Data 1

The accelerated degradation measurements data of unencapsulated PSCs (Source Data for Supplementary Fig. 31).

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Statistical source data.

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Yan, L., Huang, H., Cui, P. et al. Fabrication of perovskite solar cells in ambient air by blocking perovskite hydration with guanabenz acetate salt. Nat Energy 8, 1158–1167 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-023-01358-w

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