Perovskite solar cells have achieved the highest power conversion efficiencies on metal oxide n-type layers, including SnO 2 and TiO 2 . Despite ZnO having superior optoelectronic properties to these metal oxides, such as improved transmittance, higher conductivity, and closer conduction band alignment to methylammonium (MA)PbI 3 , ZnO is largely overlooked due to a chemical instability when in contact with metal halide perovskites, which leads to rapid decomposition of the perovskite. While surface passivation techniques have somewhat mitigated this instability, investigations as to whether all metal halide perovskites exhibit this instability with ZnO are yet to be undertaken. Experimental methods to elucidate the degradation mechanisms at ZnO-MAPbI 3 interfaces are developed. By substituting MA with formamidinium (FA) and cesium (Cs), the stability of the perovskite-ZnO interface is greatly enhanced and it is found that stability compares favorably with SnO 2 -based devices after high-intensity UV irradiation and 85 °C thermal stressing. For devices comprising FA-and Cs-based metal halide perovskite absorber layers on ZnO, a 21.1% scanned power conversion efficiency and 18% steady-state power output are achieved. This work demonstrates that ZnO appears to be as feasible an n-type charge extraction layer as SnO 2 , with many foreseeable advantages, provided that MA cations are avoided.

The authors propose a comprehensive mechanism for the improvement to optoelectronic properties observed when metal halide perovskites are exposed to light and air in ambient conditions, a process known as photo-brightening. Hydrogen peroxide is shown to be the active reagent responsible, and the authors demonstrate its use as a simple and fast post-treatment, resulting in substantial improvements to photoluminescence and photovoltaic device performance.

Trap-related charge-carrier recombination fundamentally limits the performance of perovskite solar cells and other optoelectronic devices. While improved fabrication and passivation techniques have reduced trap densities, the properties of trap states and their impact on the charge-carrier dynamics in metal-halide perovskites are still under debate. Here, a unified model is presented of the radiative and nonradiative recombination channels in a mixed formamidinium-cesium lead iodide perovskite, including charge-carrier trapping, de-trapping and accumulation, as well as higher-order recombination mechanisms. A fast initial photoluminescence (PL) decay component observed after pulsed photogeneration is demonstrated to result from rapid localization of free charge carriers in unoccupied trap states, which may be followed by de-trapping, or nonradiative recombination with free carriers of opposite charge. Such initial decay components are shown to be highly sensitive to remnant charge carriers that accumulate in traps under pulsedlaser excitation, with partial trap occupation masking the trap density actually present in the material. Finally, such modelling reveals a change in trap density at the phase transition, and disentangles the radiative and nonradiative charge recombination channels present in FA 0.95 Cs 0.05 PbI 3, accurately predicting the experimentally recorded PL efficiencies between 50 and 295 K, and demonstrating that bimolecular recombination is a fully radiative process.

with outstanding optoelectronic properties. [1] In 2009, these materials were introduced in solar cells and have since established a striking increase in performance, reaching over 22% in stateof-the-art devices. [2] Here, the perovskite absorber is sandwiched between two selective charge extraction layers, that transport the charges to the electrodes. [3] Although efficient inorganic hole transporting materials (HTMs) have been reported, [4] the most well-known HTMs are the organic materials 2,2′,7,7′-tetrakis-(N,N-di-4-methoxyphenylamino)-9,9′spirobifluorene (Spiro-OMeTAD) and polytriarylamine (PTAA). Alternatives that compete in performance have been published, [5][6][7] however, just like Spiro-OMeTAD and PTAA, most of these materials are synthesized in multistep synthetic procedures, involving (transition) metal catalyzed cross-coupling reactions, stringent reaction conditions and extensive product purification. This results in a relative high material cost, consequently leading to a significant contribution to the total device cost. [5,8,9] Additionally, the tedious synthesis hampers large State-of-the-art perovskite-based solar cells employ expensive, organic hole transporting materials (HTMs) such as Spiro-OMeTAD that, in turn, limits the commercialization of this promising technology. Herein an HTM (EDOT-Amide-TPA) is reported in which a functional amide-based backbone is introduced, which allows this material to be synthesized in a simple condensation reaction with an estimated cost of <$5 g −1 . When employed in perovskite solar cells, EDOT-Amide-TPA demonstrates stabilized power conversion efficiencies up to 20.0% and reproducibly outperforms Spiro-OMeTAD in direct comparisons. Time resolved microwave conductivity measurements indicate that the observed improvement originates from a faster hole injection rate from the perovskite to EDOT-Amide-TPA. Additionally, the devices exhibit an improved lifetime, which is assigned to the coordination of the amide bond to the Li-additive, offering a novel strategy to hamper the migration of additives. It is shown that, despite the lack of a conjugated backbone, the amide-based HTM can outperform state-of-the-art HTMs at a fraction of the cost, thereby providing a novel set of design strategies to develop new, low-cost HTMs.

For neat Pb perovskites, two-dimensional (2D) hybrid perovskites, where n layers of inorganic material are separated by a long-chain organic cation, generally exhibit greater stability but have lower photovoltaic performance characteristics, motivating the study of 2D/3D mixeddimension systems to realize both high efficiency and stability. In this Letter, we demonstrate such optimal compromise between performance and stability using formamidinium, cesium, and t-butylammonium as A-site cations with Pb:Sn mixed-metal low-band-gap perovskites. Perovskite solar cells based on n = 4 and 5 lead−tin perovskites achieved power conversion efficiencies of up to 9.3 and 10.6%, respectively, and correspondingly retained 47 and 29% of their initial efficiency during storage in nitrogen for 2000 h. A similar stability trend for n = 4 over n = 5 was also observed for unencapsulated devices during continuous operation under a combined air atmosphere and temperature for 10 h, resulting in improved stability over the 3D lead−tin counterpart.