Self-assembled materials with an ordered hydrophilic bilayer for high performance inverted Perovskite solar cells

Geping Qu; Letian Zhang; Ying Qiao; Shaokuan Gong; Yuanjia Ding; Yuli Tao; Siyuan Cai; Xiao-Yong Chang; Qian Chen; Pengfei Xie; Junyuan Feng; Changqin Gao; Guopeng Li; Hui Xiao; Fei Wang; Hanlin Hu; Jie Yang; Shi Chen; Alex K-Y Jen; Xihan Chen; Zong-Xiang Xu

doi:10.1038/s41467-024-55523-0

Self-assembled materials with an ordered hydrophilic bilayer for high performance inverted Perovskite solar cells

Nat Commun. 2025 Jan 2;16(1):86. doi: 10.1038/s41467-024-55523-0.

Authors

Geping Qu^#^{1

2}, Letian Zhang^#¹, Ying Qiao^#¹, Shaokuan Gong^#³, Yuanjia Ding^#¹, Yuli Tao⁴, Siyuan Cai¹, Xiao-Yong Chang¹, Qian Chen¹, Pengfei Xie¹, Junyuan Feng¹, Changqin Gao¹, Guopeng Li¹, Hui Xiao⁵, Fei Wang⁶, Hanlin Hu⁶, Jie Yang⁷, Shi Chen⁷, Alex K-Y Jen⁸, Xihan Chen⁹, Zong-Xiang Xu^{10

11}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China.
² Department of Materials Science and Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China.
³ Department of Mechanical and Energy Engineering, SUSTech Energy Institute for Carbon Neutrality, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China.
⁴ University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China.
⁵ Key Laboratory of Bioelectrochemistry & Environmental Analysis of Gansu Province, College of Chemistry & Chemical Engineering, Northwest Normal University, Lanzhou, China.
⁶ Hoffmann Institute of Advanced Materials, Shenzhen Polytechnic University, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China.
⁷ Henan Key Laboratory of Quantum Materials and Quantum Energy, School of Quantum Information Future Technology, Henan University, Zhengzhou, China.
⁸ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China. [email protected].
⁹ Department of Mechanical and Energy Engineering, SUSTech Energy Institute for Carbon Neutrality, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China. [email protected].
¹⁰ Department of Chemistry, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China. [email protected].
¹¹ Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Joint Laboratory for Photonic-Thermal-Electrical Energy Materials and Devices, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China. [email protected].

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

While self-assembled material based inverted perovskite solar cells have surpassed power conversion efficiencies of 26%, enhancing their performance in large-area configurations remains a significant challenge. In this work, we report a self-assembled material based hole-selective layer 4-(7H-dibenzo[c,g]carbazol-7-yl)phenyl)phosphonic acid, with a π-expanded conjugation. The enhanced intermolecular π-π interactions facilitate the self-assembly of 4-(7H-dibenzo[c,g]carbazol-7-yl)phenyl)phosphonic acid molecules to form an ordered bilayer with a hydrophilic surface, which passivates the buried perovskite interface defect and enables high-quality and large-area perovskite preparation, while simultaneously enhancing interfacial charge extraction and transport. The certified efficiency of 4-(7H-dibenzo[c,g]carbazol-7-yl)phenyl)phosphonic acid based small-area (0.0715 cm²) device is 26.39% with high stability. Furthermore, a certified efficiency of 25.21% is achieved for a 99.12 mm² large area device.