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Elimination of grain surface concavities for improved perovskite thin-film interfaces

Nature Energy volume 9, pages 999–1010 (2024)Cite this article

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An Author Correction to this article was published on 22 July 2024

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Abstract

The surface of individual grains of metal halide perovskite films can determine the properties of heterointerfaces at the microscale and the performance of the resultant solar cells. However, the geometric characteristics of grain surfaces have rarely been investigated. Here we elaborate on the existence of grain surface concavities (GSCs) and their effects on the charge-extracting, chemical and thermomechanical properties of buried perovskite heterointerfaces. The evolution of GSCs is triggered by grain-coalescence-induced biaxial tensile strain and thermal-coarsening-induced grain-boundary grooving. As such, GSCs are tailorable by regulating the grain growth kinetics. As a proof of concept, we used tridecafluorohexane-1-sulfonic acid potassium to alleviate biaxial tensile strain and grain-boundary grooving by molecular functionalization, thus forming non-concave grain micro-surfaces. The resultant perovskite solar cells demonstrate enhanced power conversion efficiency and elevated power conversion efficiency retention under ISOS-standardized thermal cycling (300 cycles), damp heat (660 h) and maximum power point tracking (1,290 h) tests. This work sheds light on micro-surface engineering to improve the durability and performance of perovskite solar cells and optoelectronics.

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Fig. 1: Geometric characteristics and chemical tailoring of GSC microstructures at the perovskite grain–CTL micro-heterointerface.
Fig. 2: Microstructural evolution of GSCs at the perovskite grain–CTL micro-interface.
Fig. 3: The optoelectronic, chemical, heat-transfer and thermomechanical properties of the perovskite grain–CTL micro-interface.
Fig. 4: PCE and durability of PSC devices with and without GSCs at the perovskite grain–CTL micro-interface.

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The data that support the main findings are available in the main text and the Supplementary Information. Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

Y. Zhou acknowledges the Excellent Young Scientists Fund (grant no. 52222318) from the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Early Career Scheme (grant no. 22300221), the General Research Fund (grant nos. 12302822 and 12300923) and the Collaborative Research Scheme (grant no. CRS_HKUST203/23) from the Hong Kong Research Grant Council. T.X. acknowledges the support of the Hong Kong PhD Fellowship and administrative support from S.-K. So at Hong Kong Baptist University. The research at Yale University was primarily supported by the US National Science Foundation (grant no. DMR-2313648).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR, China

    Tong Xiao, Mingwei Hao & Tianwei Duan

  2. Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    Yanyan Li & Peijun Guo

  3. Energy Sciences Institute, Yale University, West Haven, CT, USA

    Yanyan Li & Peijun Guo

  4. Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Hong Kong SAR, China

    Yalan Zhang & Yuanyuan Zhou

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  1. Tong Xiao
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Contributions

Y. Zhou conceived the idea and supervised the project. Y. Zhou performed the technology innovation. Y. Zhou and T.X. co-designed the experiments. T.X. fabricated and tested the solar cell devices, characterized the material samples (AFM, UV-vis, PL mapping, delamination tests, etc.) and carried out the multiscale FEA simulation. M.H. and Y. Zhang assisted with the scanning electron microscopy and AFM characterizations. T.D. performed the X-ray diffraction characterization. Y.L. and P.G. performed the spectroscopic measurements for PL and thermal transport measurements. T.X. and Y. Zhou drafted the paper. All co-authors contributed to reviewing and revising the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yuanyuan Zhou.

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Competing interests

A United States provisional utility patent has been filed for the technological innovation presented in this work. The authors declare no other competing interests.

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Nature Energy thanks Bo Chen, Qing Zhao and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs 1–34 and Tables 1–3.

Reporting Summary

Supplementary Data 1

Source data for Supplementary Fig. 27.

Supplementary Data 2

Source data for Supplementary Fig. 32b.

Supplementary Data 3

Source data for Supplementary Fig. 33.

Source data

Source Data Fig. 1

Statistical source data of GBG angle in Fig. 1j.

Source Data Fig. 3

Statistical source data of normalized delaminated area in Fig. 3l.

Source Data Fig. 4

Statistical source data and PV parameters behind the efficiency values in Fig. 4c.

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Xiao, T., Hao, M., Duan, T. et al. Elimination of grain surface concavities for improved perovskite thin-film interfaces. Nat Energy 9, 999–1010 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-024-01567-x

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