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Bioinspired molecules design for bilateral synergistic passivation in buried interfaces of planar perovskite solar cells

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Abstract

Trap-mediated energy loss in the buried interface with non-exposed feature constitutes one of the serious challenges for achieving high-performance perovskite solar cells (PSCs). Inspired by the adhesion mechanism of mussels, herein, three catechol derivatives with functional Lewis base groups, namely 3,4-Dihydroxyphenylalanine (DOPA), 3,4-Dihydroxyphenethylamine (DA) and 3-(3,4-Dihydroxyphenyl) propionic acid (DPPA), were strategically designed. These molecules as interfacial linkers are incorporated into the buried interface between perovskite and SnO2 surface, achieving bilateral synergetic passivation effect. The crosslinking can produce secondary bonding with the undercoordinated Pb2+ and Sn4+ exhibited the best performance and operational stability. Upon the DOPA passivation, a stabilized power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 21.5% was demonstrated for the planar PSCs. After 55 days of room-temperature storage, the unencapsulated devices with the DOPA crosslinker could still maintain 85% of their initial performance in air under relative humidity of ≈15%. This work opens up a new strategy for passivating the buried interfaces of perovskite photovoltaics and also provides important insights into designing defect passivation agents for other perovskite optoelectronic devices, such as light-emitting diodes, photodetectors, and lasers.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank the financial support from the National Key R&D Program of China (No. 2018YFA0208501), the National Nature Science Foundation of China (Nos. 51803217, 51773206, 91963212, and 51961145102 [BRICS project]), Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences (Nos. BNLMS-CXXM-202005 and 2019BMS20003), K. C. Wong Education Foundation, Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences (BNLMS-CXXM-202005), Key R&D and Promotion Project of Henan Province (No. 192102210032), Open Project of State Key Laboratory of Silicon Materials (No. SKL2019-10), and Outstanding Young Talent Research Fund of Zhengzhou University. The authors also thank the Advanced Analysis & Computation Center at Zhengzhou University for materials and device characterization support. The authors also thank Prof. Bin Zhang in School of Materials Science and Engineering at Zhengzhou University for the materials characterization and analysis.

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  1. Bin Wang and Junjie Ma contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Henan Institute of Advanced Technology, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, 450001, China

    Bin Wang, Junjie Ma, Zehua Li, Gangshu Chen, Qiang Gu, Shuyao Chen, Yiqiang Zhang & Jingbo Chen

  2. Key Laboratory of Green Printing, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100190, Beijing, China

    Yanlin Song

  3. State Key Laboratory of Silicon Materials & School of Materials Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310027, China

    Yiqiang Zhang, Xiaodong Pi, Xuegong Yu & Deren Yang

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  1. Bin Wang
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Correspondence to Yiqiang Zhang.

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Bioinspired molecules design for bilateral synergistic passivation in buried interfaces of planar perovskite solar cells

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Wang, B., Ma, J., Li, Z. et al. Bioinspired molecules design for bilateral synergistic passivation in buried interfaces of planar perovskite solar cells. Nano Res. 15, 1069–1078 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-021-3600-z

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