Surface chemical polishing and passivation minimize non-radiative recombination for all-perovskite tandem solar cells

Abstract

All-perovskite tandem solar cells have shown great promise in breaking the Shockley–Queisser limit of single-junction solar cells. However, the efficiency improvement of all-perovskite tandem solar cells is largely hindered by the surface defects induced non-radiative recombination loss in Sn–Pb mixed narrow bandgap perovskite films. Here, we report a surface reconstruction strategy utilizing a surface polishing agent, 1,4-butanediamine, together with a surface passivator, ethylenediammonium diiodide, to eliminate Sn-related defects and passivate organic cation and halide vacancy defects on the surface of Sn–Pb mixed perovskite films. Our strategy not only delivers high-quality Sn–Pb mixed perovskite films with a close-to-ideal stoichiometric ratio surface but also minimizes the non-radiative energy loss at the perovskite/electron transport layer interface. As a result, our Sn–Pb mixed perovskite solar cells with bandgaps of 1.32 and 1.25 eV realize power conversion efficiencies of 22.65% and 23.32%, respectively. Additionally, we further obtain a certified power conversion efficiency of 28.49% of two-junction all-perovskite tandem solar cells.

The efficiency of all-perovskite tandem solar cells is impacted by the nonradiative recombination loss in Sn–Pb mixed narrow bandgap perovskite films. Here, the authors utilize a surface polishing agent with surface passivator to deliver films with a close-to-ideal stoichiometric ratio surface.