Learning From Plants: Lycopene Additive Passivation toward Efficient and “Fresh” Perovskite Solar Cells with Oxygen and Ultraviolet Resistance

Abstract

serious concern compared with other commercial solar cells. Moreover, experiments show that PSCs degrade quickly on timescales of minutes when exposed to both light and oxygen. In other words, the decomposition is extremely aggravated under both O 2 atmosphere and light illumination, [3] which becomes an urgent and necessary issue to be solved for employing the PSCs in practical conditions. Misra demonstrated that oxygen prefers to adhere to the perovskite surface by Van der Waals force [4] and causes electron transfer from the perovskite surface to oxygen and form super oxides. [5] The perovskite crystal is decomposed when O 2 binds to vacancies and the PbI bond is broken, drastically leading to the degradation of the perovskite film. [6] When the device is illuminated by ultraviolet (UV) illumination in the O 2 atmosphere, the following degradation process will occur [7] : lights supply energy to oxidate I − to form I 0 and the corresponding free electrons from I − combine with O 2 to form radicals O 2 − , which snatch protons from CH 3 NH 3 + . Then, the volatile CH 3 NH 3 from A site organic cation can easily escape from the perovskite crystal structure. The escaped I − and organic cations lead to the vast collapse of the ABX 3 framework and irreversible degradation of PSCs. Therefore, the harsh condition of both UV light illumination and O 2 atmosphere can extremely expedite the rates of the degradation process.On the other hand, tremendous traps are formed during the solution process and prefer to assemble at grain boundaries (GBs) of the perovskite, leading to the formation of serious nonradiative recombination centers [8] and much more vulnerable perovskite films resisting the invasion of H 2 O and oxygen. Additionally, the grain-boundary defects could supply a shortcut to accelerate ion migration of I − , leading to perovskite phase segregation and device hysteresis issues. [9] Moreover, the pinholes on the surface make direct contraction between the hole transport layer (HTL) and the electron transport layer, inducing detrimental leakage currents in the PSCs. Therefore, dealing with the GB traps is also an essential issue to attain both high PCE and stable stability of the target PSCs. Previous works demonstrate small organic additives such as O-donor 1,3,7-trimethylxanthine, Currently, the photovoltaic performance of perovskite solar cells (PSCs) is closely linked to undermined defects in the perovskite, and the correct approach to ensure stability under practical conditions is still in dispute. Therefore, natural, healthy, and low-cost additives are expected to not only reduce the trap sites but also drastically improve stability. In this work, the natural antioxidant additive lycopene extracted from tomatoes is introduced into PSCs. The results indicate that lycopene can passivate the grain boundaries, improve the crystallinity, reduce trap density, and facilitate the α phase formation of perovskite at room temperature. As a result, the power conversion efficiency (PCE) is considerably improved fr...

Vitamin Natural Molecule Enabled Highly Efficient and Stable Planar n–p Homojunction Perovskite Solar Cells with Efficiency Exceeding 24.2%

“…22.77 76.9 20.25 2019 [37] Betulin 1.106 23.43 81.57 21.15 2020 [36] Artemisinin 1.13 22.41 80.2 20.42 2020 [91] Capsaicin 1.13 23.10 83.81 21.88 2021 [45] Carnitine 1.12 21.70 82.78 20.12 2021 [92] Lycopene 1.10 23.47 76 19.63 2021 [93] Silk fibroin 1.102 23.85 75 19.6 2022 [94] Zinc oxalate 1.18 15.5 76.7 14.1 2022 [95] Lycopene 1.21 24.10 81.00 23.62 2022 [96] VC and VD2 the devices at the maximum power point (MPP) to explore their steady-state output performance to better understand the devices operating state, as shown in Figure 4e. Under continuous MPP tracking for 200 s, the steady-state efficiency of D4 maintained 94.7% of the original efficiency, while the PCE of D1 only retained about 87.3% of the original PCE, indicating that D4 has better PCE output stability.…”

Plant‐Derived l‐Theanine for Ultraviolet/Ozone Resistant Perovskite Photovoltaics

“…[39] Subsequently, Song et al further studied the oxygen and ultraviolet resistance of PSCs after lycopene passivation. [40] Ma et al have investigated that a Lewis base additive of nicotinamide can passivate surface and grain boundary defects to suppress nonradiative recombination, realizing grain growth and efficiency improvement. [33] Wang et al have reported that caffeine with two conjugated carbonyl groups has a strong interaction with Pb 2+ ions to deliver perovskite films with preferred orientation and excellent electronic properties, finally enhancing the thermal stability of the device.…”

“…[33] Wang et al have reported that caffeine with two conjugated carbonyl groups has a strong interaction with Pb 2+ ions to deliver perovskite films with preferred orientation and excellent electronic properties, finally enhancing the thermal stability of the device. [41] Subsequently, this group has systematically studied the effect of the constructive configurations of theophylline, [41] caffeine, [40] and theobromine on the surface-defect passivation of perovskite photovoltaics through theoretical analysis and experimental characterization. [42] It can be concluded that food-derived additives with widely available raw materials also act as a key factor in the preparation of low toxicity, high efficiency, and stable perovskite devices.…”

Bifunctional Molecule Enables High-Quality CsPb(Br/Cl)3 Nanocrystals for Efficient and Stable Pure-Blue Perovskite Light-Emitting Diodes

“…The spectra of both samples exhibit sharp negative signals at around 453 nm. However, the bleach recovery of optimized PeNCs is slower than that of pristine PeNCs, indicating that PFTS could eliminate the trap states on PeNCs . Then the time-resolved PL decay spectra were performed to further illustrate the reason for improved optical properties, as shown in Figure d.…”

“…However, the bleach recovery of optimized PeNCs is slower than that of pristine PeNCs, indicating that PFTS could eliminate the trap states on PeNCs. 30 Then the time-resolved PL decay spectra were performed to further illustrate the reason for improved optical properties, as shown in Figure 1d. The PL decay curves are fitted by a triexponential function and the PL decay parameters are listed in Table S1.…”