Oriented nucleation in formamidinium perovskite for photovoltaics

Pengju Shi; Yong Ding; Bin Ding; Qiyu Xing; Tim Kodalle; Carolin M Sutter-Fella; Ilhan Yavuz; Canglang Yao; Wei Fan; Jiazhe Xu; Yuan Tian; Danyu Gu; Ke Zhao; Shaun Tan; Xu Zhang; Libing Yao; Paul J Dyson; Jonathan L Slack; Deren Yang; Jingjing Xue; Mohammad Khaja Nazeeruddin; Yang Yang; Rui Wang

doi:10.1038/s41586-023-06208-z

Oriented nucleation in formamidinium perovskite for photovoltaics

Nature. 2023 Aug;620(7973):323-327. doi: 10.1038/s41586-023-06208-z. Epub 2023 Jun 21.

Authors

Pengju Shi^#^{1

2}, Yong Ding^#^{3

4}, Bin Ding^#³, Qiyu Xing^#⁵, Tim Kodalle⁶, Carolin M Sutter-Fella⁶, Ilhan Yavuz⁷, Canglang Yao⁸, Wei Fan^{1

2}, Jiazhe Xu², Yuan Tian^{1

2}, Danyu Gu⁹, Ke Zhao^{1

2}, Shaun Tan⁵, Xu Zhang², Libing Yao², Paul J Dyson³, Jonathan L Slack¹⁰, Deren Yang¹, Jingjing Xue¹¹, Mohammad Khaja Nazeeruddin¹², Yang Yang¹³, Rui Wang^{14

15

16}

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Silicon Materials and Advanced Semiconductor Materials, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.
² School of Engineering and Westlake Institute for Advanced Study, Westlake University, Hangzhou, China.
³ Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, EPFL VALAIS, Sion, Switzerland.
⁴ Beijing Key Laboratory of Novel Thin-Film Solar Cells, North China Electric Power University, Beijing, China.
⁵ Department of Materials Science and Engineering and California NanoSystems Institute, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
⁶ Molecular Foundry, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA.
⁷ Department of Physics, Marmara University, Istanbul, Turkey.
⁸ Laboratory of Advanced Materials, Department of Chemistry, Fudan University, Shanghai, China.
⁹ Instrumentation and Service Center for Molecular Sciences, Westlake University, Hangzhou, China.
¹⁰ Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA.
¹¹ State Key Laboratory of Silicon Materials and Advanced Semiconductor Materials, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China. jjxue@zju.edu.cn.
¹² Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, EPFL VALAIS, Sion, Switzerland. mdkhaja.nazeeruddin@epfl.ch.
¹³ Department of Materials Science and Engineering and California NanoSystems Institute, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA. yangy@ucla.edu.
¹⁴ School of Engineering and Westlake Institute for Advanced Study, Westlake University, Hangzhou, China. wangrui@westlake.edu.cn.
¹⁵ Research Center for Industries of the Future, Westlake University, Hangzhou, China. wangrui@westlake.edu.cn.
¹⁶ Division of Solar Energy Conversion and Catalysis at Westlake University, Zhejiang Baima Lake Laboratory Co., Ltd, Hangzhou, China. wangrui@westlake.edu.cn.

^# Contributed equally.

PMID: 37344595
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06208-z

Abstract

The black phase of formamidinium lead iodide (FAPbI₃) perovskite shows huge promise as an efficient photovoltaic, but it is not favoured energetically at room temperature, meaning that the undesirable yellow phases are always present alongside it during crystallization^1-4. This problem has made it difficult to formulate the fast crystallization process of perovskite and develop guidelines governing the formation of black-phase FAPbI₃ (refs. ^5,6). Here we use in situ monitoring of the perovskite crystallization process to report an oriented nucleation mechanism that can help to avoid the presence of undesirable phases and improve the performance of photovoltaic devices in different film-processing scenarios. The resulting device has a demonstrated power-conversion efficiency of 25.4% (certified 25.0%) and the module, which has an area of 27.83 cm², has achieved an impressive certified aperture efficiency of 21.4%.