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Improving interface quality for 1-cm2 all-perovskite tandem solar cells

Nature (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

All-perovskite tandem solar cells provide high power conversion efficiency at a low cost1,2,3,4. Rapid efficiency improvement in small-area (<0.1 cm2) tandem solar cells has been primarily driven by advances in low-bandgap (approximately 1.25 eV) perovskite bottom subcells5,6,7. However, unsolved issues remain for wide-bandgap (> 1.75 eV) perovskite top subcells8, which at present have large voltage and fill factor losses, particularly for large-area (>1 cm2) tandem solar cells. Here we develop a self-assembled monolayer of (4-(7H-dibenzo[c,g]carbazol-7-yl)butyl)phosphonic acid as a hole-selective layer for wide-bandgap perovskite solar cells, which facilitates subsequent growth of high-quality wide-bandgap perovskite over a large area with suppressed interfacial non-radiative recombination, enabling efficient hole extraction. By integrating (4-(7H-dibenzo[c,g]carbazol-7-yl)butyl)phosphonic acid in devices, we demonstrate a high open-circuit voltage (VOC) of 1.31 V in a 1.77-eV perovskite solar cell, corresponding to a very low VOC deficit of 0.46 V (with respect to the bandgap). With these wide-bandgap perovskite subcells, we report 27.0% (26.4% certified stabilized) monolithic all-perovskite tandem solar cells with an aperture area of 1.044 cm2. The certified tandem cell shows an outstanding combination of a high VOC of 2.12 V and a fill factor of 82.6%. Our demonstration of the large-area tandem solar cells with high certified efficiency is a key step towards scaling up all-perovskite tandem photovoltaic technology.

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Fig. 1: Material properties and schematic of interconnection between ITO, HTLs and PVSK.
Fig. 2: Characterizations of HTLs on ITO and PVSK films deposited on different HTLs.
Fig. 3: Photovoltaic performance and characterizations of complete WBG devices with different HTLs.
Fig. 4: Photovoltaic performance and characterizations of complete all-PVSK TSCs with different HTLs.

Data availability

All data are available in the paper or Supplementary Information. The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding authors on reasonable request.

Code availability

The codes that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding authors on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (no. 2019YFE0120000), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (nos. 62174112, 62005188 and 21875111), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (nos. YJ201955 and YJ2021157), the Science and Technology Program of Sichuan Province (no. 2020JDJQ0030), the Engineering Featured Team Fund of Sichuan University (2020SCUNG102), the Research Funds from Tan Kah Kee Innovation Laboratory (HRTP-[2022]-45), the Key R&D Program of Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (BE2019733), the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (BK20190825), open foundation of State Key Laboratory of Featured Metal Materials and Life-Cycle Safety for Composite Structures, Guangxi University (grant no. 2022GXYSOF05) and Key Lab of Advanced Optical Manufacturing Technologies of Jiangsu Province and Key Lab of Modern Optical Technologies of Education Ministry of China, Soochow University (no. KJS1909). F.F. acknowledges funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation (no. 200021_213073/1) and European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 101075605. We acknowledge funding from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft in the SPP 2196 (HIPSTER 424709669 and SURPRISE 423749265). M.S. further acknowledges the Heisenberg programme from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) for funding (project no. 498155101). F.L. acknowledges funding by the Volkswagen Foundation through the Freigeist Program. We also acknowledge Jihua Zou for measuring confocal PL mapping of WBG perovskites.

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Rui He, Wanhai Wang, Zongjin Yi, Felix Lang

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Materials Science and Engineering & Institute of New Energy and Low-Carbon Technology & Engineering Research Center of Alternative Energy Materials and Devices, Ministry of Education, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China

    Rui He, Zongjin Yi, Cong Chen, Jincheng Luo, Jingwei Zhu, Yi Luo, Shengqiang Ren, Xia Hao, Lili Wu, Jingquan Zhang & Dewei Zhao

  2. Institute of Flexible Electronics (IFE, Future Technologies), Innovation Laboratory for Sciences and Technologies of Energy Materials of Fujian Province (IKKEM), Xiamen University, Xiamen, China

    Wanhai Wang & Weihua Tang

  3. School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing, China

    Wanhai Wang, Jie Zhou & Weihua Tang

  4. Institute of Physics and Astronomy, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany

    Felix Lang, Jarla Thiesbrummel, Sahil Shah & Martin Stolterfoht

  5. Clarendon Laboratory, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Jarla Thiesbrummel

  6. College of Materials, Fujian Key Laboratory of Advanced Materials, Xiamen Key Laboratory of Electronic Ceramic Materials and Devices, Xiamen University, Xiamen, China

    Kun Wei & Jinbao Zhang

  7. School of Optoelectronic Science and Engineering, Collaborative Innovation Center of Suzhou Nano Science and Technology, Key Lab of Advanced Optical Manufacturing Technologies of Jiangsu Province, Key Lab of Modern Optical Technologies of Education Ministry of China, Soochow University, Suzhou, China

    Changlei Wang

  8. Laboratory for Thin Films and Photovoltaics, Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, Dübendorf, Switzerland

    Huagui Lai & Fan Fu

  9. State Key Laboratory of Featured Metal Materials and Life-cycle Safety for Composite Structures, School of Resources, Environment and Materials, Guangxi University, Nanning, China

    Hao Huang & Bingsuo Zou

  10. China-Australia Institute for Advanced Materials and Manufacturing (IAMM), Jiaxing University, Jiaxing, China

    Xinxing Yin

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  1. Rui He
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Contributions

D.Z., F.F., W.T. and C.C. conceived and designed the research. R.H. carried out the fabrication and main characterizations of WBG PVSK films and devices. W.W., J. Zhou. and W.T. synthesized the SAMs and provided the relevant characterizations of SAMs. R.H., Z.Y., Y.L., J.L. and J. Zhu fabricated all-PVSK tandem devices. J.L. and J. Zhu helped to optimize the LBG devices. F.L., J.T., S.S. and M.S. performed the RPV measurements, the fast hysteresis measurements, the PLQY and electroluminescence-related characterizations and constructed the p-JV of WBG PSCs and TSCs. C.W. performed EQE measurements. H.L. and F.F. carried out TPV and EIS measurements. H.H. and B.Z. performed PiFM measurements. X.Y. synthesized the molecule 2-thiopheneethylammonium chloride. M.S. performed numerical simulations of WBG PVSKs and helped to analyse the results. K.W. and Jinbao Zhang performed the exfoliation of WBG PVSK and characterized the photoluminescence mapping and SEM of the buried interface. R.H., C.C., F.F. and D.Z. wrote the manuscript with inputs from all co-authors. All authors discussed the results and reviewed the manuscript. D.Z. directed this project.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Cong Chen, Fan Fu, Weihua Tang or Dewei Zhao.

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He, R., Wang, W., Yi, Z. et al. Improving interface quality for 1-cm2 all-perovskite tandem solar cells. Nature (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-05992-y

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