Abstract
Perovskite solar cells have seen impressive progress in performance and stability, yet maintaining efficiency while scaling area remains a challenge. Here we find that additives commonly used to passivate large-area perovskite films often co-precipitate during perovskite crystallization and aggregate at interfaces, contributing to defects and to spatial inhomogeneity. We develop design criteria for additives to prevent their evaporative precipitation and enable uniform passivation of defects. We explored liquid crystals with melting point below the perovskite processing temperature, functionalization for defect passivation and hydrophobicity to improve device stability. We find that thermotropic liquid crystals such as 3,4,5-trifluoro-4′-(trans-4-propylcyclohexyl)biphenyl enable large-area perovskite films that are uniform, low in defects and stable against environmental stress factors. We demonstrate modules with a certified stabilized efficiency of 21.1% at an aperture area of 31 cm2 and enhanced stability under damp-heat conditions (ISOS-D-3, 85% relative humidity, 85 °C) with T86 (the duration for the efficiency to decay to 86% of the initial value) of 1,200 h, and reverse bias with (ISOS-V-1, negative maximum-power-point voltage) and without bypass diodes.
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Acknowledgements
M.G.K. was supported by ONR grant N00014-20-1-2725. This work is partially supported by award 70NANB19H005 from the US Department of Commerce, National Institute of Standards and Technology as part of the Center for Hierarchical Materials Design. This work made use of the SPID, EPIC, Keck-II and NUFAB facilities of Northwestern University’s NUANCE Center, which has received support from the SHyNE Resource (National Science Foundation (NSF) ECCS-2025633), the International Institute of Nanotechnology, Northwestern University and Northwestern’s Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) programs (NSF DMR-1720139 and NSF DMR-2308691). The authors acknowledge the IMSERC facilities at Northwestern University, which has received support from the SHyNE Resource (NSF ECCS-2025633) and Northwestern University. Charge transport characterization was supported by the NSF MRSEC at Northwestern University under award number DMR-1720319. Part of the research described in this paper was performed at the Canadian Light Source, a national research facility of the University of Saskatchewan, which is supported by the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, the National Research Council, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Government of Saskatchewan and the University of Saskatchewan. A.S.R.B. acknowledges support from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology through the Ibn Rushd Postdoctoral Fellowship Award.
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B.C., M.K.N., M.G.K. and E.H.S. supervised the project. Y.Y. conceived the idea. Y.Y. and C.L. designed the experiments and performed the main characterizations. J.X. designed and conducted the DFT calculations. Y.D. and B.D. helped to perform solar cell and module fabrication. J.Y. and X.H. conducted the TEM measurements. J.L. helped with the crystallography analysis. S.S.H., V.K.S. and M.C.H. conducted the thermal cycling stability test. L.G. performed the PLQY and GIWAXS measurements and was helpful with the data analysis. A.S.R.B. conducted the contact angle test. A.L., H.Z. and S.M.P. were helpful with the construction of the paper and revised the paper. Y.Y. wrote the first draft of the paper. All the authors revised and approved the paper.
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Yang, Y., Liu, C., Ding, Y. et al. A thermotropic liquid crystal enables efficient and stable perovskite solar modules. Nat Energy 9, 316–323 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-023-01444-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-023-01444-z
