Multifunctional sulfonium-based treatment for perovskite solar cells with less than 1% efficiency loss over 4,500-h operational stability tests

Jiajia Suo; Bowen Yang; Edoardo Mosconi; Dmitry Bogachuk; Tiarnan A S Doherty; Kyle Frohna; Dominik J Kubicki; Fan Fu; YeonJu Kim; Oussama Er-Raji; Tiankai Zhang; Lorenzo Baldinelli; Lukas Wagner; Ayodhya N Tiwari; Feng Gao; Andreas Hinsch; Samuel D Stranks; Filippo De Angelis; Anders Hagfeldt

doi:10.1038/s41560-023-01421-6

Multifunctional sulfonium-based treatment for perovskite solar cells with less than 1% efficiency loss over 4,500-h operational stability tests

Nat Energy. 2024;9(2):172-183. doi: 10.1038/s41560-023-01421-6. Epub 2024 Jan 4.

Authors

Jiajia Suo^#^{1

2}, Bowen Yang^#^{1

2}, Edoardo Mosconi³, Dmitry Bogachuk^{4

5

6}, Tiarnan A S Doherty^{7

8}, Kyle Frohna^{7

9}, Dominik J Kubicki^{10

11}, Fan Fu¹², YeonJu Kim^{2

13}, Oussama Er-Raji^{4

5}, Tiankai Zhang¹⁴, Lorenzo Baldinelli¹⁵, Lukas Wagner^{4

16}, Ayodhya N Tiwari¹², Feng Gao¹⁴, Andreas Hinsch⁴, Samuel D Stranks^{7

9}, Filippo De Angelis^{3

15

17

18}, Anders Hagfeldt^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry-Ångström Laboratory, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden.
² Laboratory of Photomolecular Science, Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering, School of Basic Sciences, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland.
³ Computational Laboratory for Hybrid/Organic Photovoltaics (CLHYO), Istituto CNR di Scienze e Tecnologie Chimiche 'Giulio Natta' (CNR-SCITEC), Perugia, Italy.
⁴ Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE, Freiburg, Germany.
⁵ Department of Sustainable Systems Engineering (INATECH), Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany.
⁶ Solarlab Aiko Europe GmbH, Freiburg, Germany.
⁷ Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
⁸ Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
⁹ Cavendish Laboratory, Department of Physics, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
¹⁰ Department of Physics, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK.
¹¹ Present Address: School of Chemistry, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, UK.
¹² Laboratory for Thin Films and Photovoltaics, Empa-Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, Duebendorf, Switzerland.
¹³ Laboratory for Molecular Engineering of Optoelectronic Nanomaterials, Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering, School of Basic Sciences, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland.
¹⁴ Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biology (IFM), Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden.
¹⁵ Department of Chemistry, Biology and Biotechnology, University of Perugia, Perugia, Italy.
¹⁶ Physics of Solar Energy Conversion Group, Department of Physics, Philipps-University Marburg, Marburg, Germany.
¹⁷ Department of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, College of Sciences and Human Studies, Prince Mohammad Bin Fahd University, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.
¹⁸ SKKU Institute of Energy Science and Technology (SIEST), Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, Korea.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

The stabilization of grain boundaries and surfaces of the perovskite layer is critical to extend the durability of perovskite solar cells. Here we introduced a sulfonium-based molecule, dimethylphenethylsulfonium iodide (DMPESI), for the post-deposition treatment of formamidinium lead iodide perovskite films. The treated films show improved stability upon light soaking and remains in the black α phase after two years ageing under ambient condition without encapsulation. The DMPESI-treated perovskite solar cells show less than 1% performance loss after more than 4,500 h at maximum power point tracking, yielding a theoretical T₈₀ of over nine years under continuous 1-sun illumination. The solar cells also display less than 5% power conversion efficiency drops under various ageing conditions, including 100 thermal cycles between 25 °C and 85 °C and an 1,050-h damp heat test.

Keywords: Energy; Solar cells.