Prof. Hongqiang Wang group (School of Materials Science and Engineering, Northwestern Polytechnical University), in collaboration with Prof. Liguo Zhu (Institute of Fluid Physics, China Academy of Engineering Physics), Prof. Vladimir A. Vinokurov (Department of Physical and Colloid Chemistry, Gubkin Russian State University of Oil and Gas), Prof. Dmitry Shchukin (Stephenson Institute for Renewable Energy, University of Liverpool), and Prof. Adrian Hierro (ISOM, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid) recently published a paper entitled “Interfacial Embedding of Laser Manufactured Fluorinated-Gold-Clusters Enabling Stable Perovsktie Solar Cells with Efficiency Over 24%” on Advanced Materials (2021) 33:2101590. In this research, they reported an efficient strategy of addressing the interfacial loss of perovskite solar cells (PSCs) through interfacial embedding of hydrophobic p-type semiconducting fluorinated-gold-clusters (FGCs), and demonstrated that the FGCs could serve as a bifunctional interfacial mediator in PSCs, which could not only modulate the carrier dynamics both at grain boundaries of perovskite active layer and at interface between perovskite and hole transport layer, but also efficiently impede the degradation of the vulnerable perovskite, as illustrated in Figure 1.
Figure 1 Laser manufactured hydrophobic FGCs as bifunctional interfacial mediator.
Tackling the interfacial loss in emerged PSCs to address synchronously the carrier dynamics and the environmental stability has been of fundamental and viable importance, while technological hurdles remain in not only creating such interfacial mediator, but the subsequent interfacial embedding in the active layer. This work reports an efficient strategy of interfacial embedding of hydrophobic p-type semiconducting fluorinated-gold-clusters for highly efficient and stable PSCs. The results presented in this work are important and inspiring for researchers working on photovoltaics, laser matter interactions, and metal clusters. The main novelties of present work are as following:
1. This work is the first demonstration of creating p-type semiconducting gold clusters dispersed in desired solvents that are laborious to obtain via conventional wet-chemistry synthesis, and the first demonstration of adopting such p-type clusters as efficient mediator to address the interfacial loss in photovoltaics.
2. This work involves the first experimental verification of the interfacial embedding of nanocrystals based additives in perovskite layer, which is of particularly importance to reveal the interfacial roles but has been rarely reported due to the technological challenges on TEM observations.
3. The efficient interfacial mediating on carrier dynamics by FGCs leads to highly efficient FAPbI3 solar cells with a champion PCE of up to 24.02%, which is the top value among the reported PSCs embedded with nanocrystals.
4. This work is also the first demonstration of endowing nanocrystals based additives with important functionality of boosting the moisture, thermal and operational stability. Of particularly importance is the boosted moisture stability, i.e. more than 10000 hours of moisture stability under relative humidity (RH) of 75% for CsFAMA based PSCs, and excellent moisture stability even under high RH of 95% for pure FAPbI3 PSCs.
Prof. Hongqiang Wang group in School of Materials Science and Engineering, Northwestern Polytechnical University, has been working on transient extreme conditions including PLICN (pulsed laser irradiation of colloidal nanoparticle) and interfacial sonochemistry, and their application in energy applications. His research team is now focusing on laser-matter interactions for energy applications including Perovskite Solar Cells, Lithium Batteries, PEC Water Splitting, as well as Quantum Dot LEDs. The above results of this work are featured as a cover by the Wiley editorial office, as shown in Figure 2. Prof. Hongqing Wang is the corresponding author, Dr. Pengfei Guo and Hongfu Zhu are the co-first authors. This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, the Joint Research Funds of Department of Science & Technology of Shaanxi Province and Northwestern Polytechnical University, and the Russian Science Foundation.
The article link is as follows: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/15214095
Figure 2 Cover image of “Nezha Conquers the Dragon King”, depicting the scenario of present work on “Conquering the Interfacial Loss in Perovskite Solar Cells via Laser Manufactured Fluorinated Gold Clusters”.
Author: Pengfei Guo
Reviewer: Wei Liu ,Hongqiang Wang
