A thermotropic liquid crystal enables efficient and stable perovskite solar modules

Yi Yang, Cheng Liu, Yong Ding, Bin Ding, Jian Xu, Ao Liu, Jiaqi Yu, Luke Grater, Huihui Zhu, Shreyash Sudhakar Hadke, Vinod K. Sangwan, Abdulaziz S. R. Bati, Xiaobing Hu, Jiantao Li, So Min Park, Mark C. Hersam, Bin Chen (), Mohammad Khaja Nazeeruddin (), Mercouri G. Kanatzidis () and Edward H. Sargent ()
Additional contact information
Yi Yang: Northwestern University
Cheng Liu: Northwestern University
Yong Ding: EPFL
Bin Ding: EPFL
Jian Xu: University of Toronto
Ao Liu: Northwestern University
Jiaqi Yu: Northwestern University
Luke Grater: University of Toronto
Huihui Zhu: Northwestern University
Shreyash Sudhakar Hadke: Northwestern University
Vinod K. Sangwan: Northwestern University
Abdulaziz S. R. Bati: Northwestern University
Xiaobing Hu: Northwestern University
Jiantao Li: Argonne National Laboratory
So Min Park: Northwestern University
Mark C. Hersam: Northwestern University
Bin Chen: Northwestern University
Mohammad Khaja Nazeeruddin: EPFL
Mercouri G. Kanatzidis: Northwestern University
Edward H. Sargent: Northwestern University

Nature Energy, 2024, vol. 9, issue 3, 316-323

Abstract: 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.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-023-01444-z Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natene:v:9:y:2024:i:3:d:10.1038_s41560-023-01444-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/nenergy/

DOI: 10.1038/s41560-023-01444-z

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Energy is currently edited by Fouad Khan

More articles in Nature Energy from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().