Although great efforts have been devoted to enhancing the efficiency and stability of perovskite solar cells (PSCs), the performance of PSCs has been far lower than anticipated. Interface engineering is helpful for obtaining high efficiency and stability through control of the interfacial charge transfer in PSCs. This paper demonstrates that the efficiency and stability of PSCs can be enhanced by introducing stable α-CsPbI 3 quantum dots (QDs) as an interface layer between the perovskite film and the hole transport material (HTM) layer. By synergistically controlling the valence band position (VBP) of the perovskite and the interface layer, an interface engineering strategy was successfully used to increase the efficiency of hole transfer from the perovskite to the HTM layer, resulting in the power conversion efficiency increasing from 15.17 to 18.56%. In addition, the enhancement of the stability of PSCs can be attributed to coating inorganic CsPbI 3 QDs onto the perovskite layer, which have a high moisture stability and result in long-term stability of the PSCs in ambient air.
High-efficiency hole transport layer
free perovskite solar cells (HTL-free PSCs) with economical and simplified
device structure can greatly facilitate the commercialization of PSCs.
However, eliminating the key HTL in PSCs results usually in a severe
efficiency loss and poor carrier transfer due to the energy-level
mismatching at the indium tin oxide (ITO)/perovskite interface. In
this study, we solve this issue by introducing an organic monomolecular
layer (ML) to raise the effective work function of ITO with the assistance
of an interface dipole created by Sn–N bonds. The energy-level
alignment at the ITO/perovskite interface is optimized with a barrier-free
contact, which favors efficient charge transfer and suppressed nonradiative
carrier recombination. The HTL-free PSCs based on the ML-modified
ITO yield an efficiency of 19.4%, much higher than those of HTL-free
PSCs on bare ITO (10.26%), comparable to state-of-the-art PSCs with
a HTL. This study provides an in-depth understanding of the mechanism
of interfacial energy-level alignment and facilitates the design of
advanced interfacial materials for simplified and efficient PSC devices.
Multifunctional nanoparticles hold promise as the next generation of therapeutic delivery and imaging agents. Nanoparticles comprising many types of materials are being tested for this purpose, including plant viral capsids. It has been found that Red clover necrotic mosaic virus (RCNMV) can be loaded with significant amounts of therapeutic molecules with molecular weights of 600 or even greater. Formulation of RCNMV into a plant viral nanoparticle (PVN) involves the loading of cargo and attachment of peptides. In this study, we show that targeting peptides (less than 16 amino acids) can be conjugated to the capsid using the heterobifunctional chemical linker sulfosuccinimidyl-4-(N-maleimidomethyl)cyclohexane-1-carboxylate (Sulfo-SMCC). The uptake of both native RCNMV capsids and peptide-conjugated RCNMV was tested in the HeLa cell line for peptides with and without fluorescent labels. Uptake of RCNMV conjugate with a CD46 targeting peptide was monitored by flow cytometry. When formulated PVNs loaded with doxorubicin and armed with a targeting peptide were delivered to HeLa cells, a cytotoxic effect was observed. The ability to modify RCNMV for specific cell targeting and cargo delivery offers a method for the intracellular delivery of reagents for research assays as well as diagnostic and therapeutic applications.
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