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A universal tactic of using Lewis-base polymer-CNTs composites as additives for high performance cm2-sized and flexible perovskite solar cells

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Abstract

Lewis-base polymers have been widely utilized as additives to act as a template for the perovskite nucleation/crystal growth and passivate the under-coordinated Pb2+ sites. However, it is uncovered in this work that the polymer on the perovskite grain boundaries would significantly hinder the charge transport due to its low conductivity, which brings about free carrier recombination and photocurrent losses. To circumvent this issue while fully exploiting the benefits of polymers in passivating the trap states in perovskite, we incorporate highly conductive multiwall carbon nanotubes (CNTs) with Lewis-base polymers as co-additives in the perovskite film. Functionalizing the CNTs with -COOH group enables a selective hole-extraction and charge transport from perovskite to the hole transporting materials (HTM). By studying the charge transporting and recombination dynamics, we revealed the individual role of the polymer and CNTs in passivating the trap states and facilitating the charge transport, respectively. As a result, the perovskite solar cells (PSCs) with polymer-CNTs composites exhibit an impressive PCE of 21.7% for a small-area device (0.16 cm2) and 20.7% for a large-area device (1.0 cm2). Moreover, due to the superior mechanical flexibility of both polymer and CNTs, the polymer-CNTs composites incorporation in the perovskite film encourages the fabrication of flexible PSCs (f-PSCs) with an impressive PCE of 18.3%, and a strong mechanical durability by retaining 80% of the initial PCE after 1,000 times bending. In addition, we proved that the selection criteria of the polymers can be extended to other long-chain Lewis-base polymers, which opens new possibilities in design and synthesis of inexpensive material for this tactic towards the fabrication of high performance large-area PSCs and f-PSCs.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars (21925506), the National Key R&D Program of China (2017YFE0106000), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51773212), Ningbo S&T Innovation 2025 Major Special Programme (2018B10055), Ningbo Municipal Science and Technology Innovative Research Team (2015B11002, 2016B10005) and CAS Key Project of Frontier Science Research (QYZDB-SSW-SYS030).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Ningbo, 315201, China

    Chang Liu, Like Huang, Qiang Lou, Shulin Song & Ziyi Ge

  2. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, 3800, Australia

    Jingsong Sun & Yi-Bing Cheng

  3. School of Physics and Telecommunication Engineering, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, 510006, China

    Xiao-Fang Jiang

  4. State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, 430070, China

    Yi-Bing Cheng

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  1. Chang Liu
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  2. Jingsong Sun
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  3. Xiao-Fang Jiang
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  4. Like Huang
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Correspondence to Shulin Song or Ziyi Ge.

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The supporting information is available online at http://chem.scichina.com and http://link.springer.com/journal/11426. The supporting materials are published as submitted, without typesetting or editing. The responsibility for scientific accuracy and content remains entirely with the authors.

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11426_2020_9866_MOESM1_ESM.docx

A Universal Tactic of Using Lewis-Base Polymer-CNTs composites as Additives for High Performance cm2-sized and Flexible Perovskite Solar Cells

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Liu, C., Sun, J., Jiang, XF. et al. A universal tactic of using Lewis-base polymer-CNTs composites as additives for high performance cm2-sized and flexible perovskite solar cells. Sci. China Chem. 64, 281–292 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11426-020-9866-6

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