Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have reached an impressive efficiency over 23%. One of its promising characteristics is the low-cost solution printability, especially for flexible solar cells. However, printing large area uniform electron transport layers on rough and soft plastic substrates without hysteresis is still a great challenge. Herein, we demonstrate slot-die printed high quality tin oxide films for high efficiency flexible PSCs. The inherent hysteresis induced by the tin oxide layer is suppressed using a universal potassium interfacial passivation strategy regardless of fabricating methods. Results show that the potassium cations, not the anions, facilitate the growth of perovskite grains, passivate the interface, and contribute to the enhanced efficiency and stability. The small size flexible PSCs achieve a high efficiency of 17.18% and large size (5 × 6 cm2) flexible modules obtain an efficiency over 15%. This passivation strategy has shown great promise for pursuing high performance large area flexible PSCs.

The interactions between four different graphenes (including pristine, B or N doped and defective graphenes) and small gas molecules (CO, NO, NO 2 and NH 3 ) were investigated by using density functional computations to exploit their potential applications as gas sensors. The structural and electronic properties of the graphene-molecule adsorption adducts are strongly dependent on the graphene structure and the molecular adsorption configuration. All the four gas molecules show much stronger adsorption on the doped or defective graphenes than that on the pristine graphene.The defective graphene shows the highest adsorption energy with CO, NO and NO 2 molecules, while the B-doped graphene gives the tightest binding with NH 3 . Meanwhile, the strong interactions between the adsorbed molecules and the modified graphenes induce dramatic changes to graphene's electronic properties. The transport behavior of a gas sensor using B-doped graphene shows a sensitivity two orders of magnitude higher than that of pristine graphene. This work reveals that the sensitivity of graphene based chemical gas sensors could be drastically improved by introducing appropriate dopant or defect.1

A novel potassium-containing quadruple-cation absorber realizes over 20% efficiency and hysteresis elimination for planar perovskite solar cells.

Organic–inorganic hybrid perovskite solar cells with mixed cations and mixed halides have achieved impressive power conversion efficiency of up to 22.1%. Phase segregation due to the mixed compositions has attracted wide concerns, and their nature and origin are still unclear. Some very useful analytical techniques are controversial in microstructural and chemical analyses due to electron beam‐induced damage to the “soft” hybrid perovskite materials. In this study photoluminescence, cathodoluminescence, and transmission electron microscopy are used to study charge carrier recombination and retrieve crystallographic and compositional information for all‐inorganic CsPbIBr2 films on the nanoscale. It is found that under light and electron beam illumination, “iodide‐rich” CsPbI(1+x)Br(2−x) phases form at grain boundaries as well as segregate as clusters inside the film. Phase segregation generates a high density of mobile ions moving along grain boundaries as ion migration “highways.” Finally, these mobile ions can pile up at the perovskite/TiO2 interface resulting in formation of larger injection barriers, hampering electron extraction and leading to strong current density–voltage hysteresis in the polycrystalline perovskite solar cells. This explains why the planar CsPbIBr2 solar cells exhibit significant hysteresis in efficiency measurements, showing an efficiency of up to 8.02% in the reverse scan and a reduced efficiency of 4.02% in the forward scan, and giving a stabilized efficiency of 6.07%.

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Organic–inorganic hybrid halide perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have recently drawn enormous attentions due to their impressive performance (>22%) and low temperature solution processability (<150 °C). Current solution process involves application of a large amount of toxic solvents, such as chlorobenzene, which is heavily employed in both the perovskite layer and the hole transport layer (HTL) deposition. Herein, this study employs green solvent of ethyl acetate for engineering efficient perovskite and HTL layers, which enables a synergic interface (perovskite/HTL) optimization. A champion efficiency of 19.43% is obtained for small cells (0.16 cm2 with mask) and over 14% for large size modules (5 × 5 cm2). The PSCs prepared from the green solvent engineering demonstrate superior performance on both efficiency and stability over their chlorobenzene counterparts. These enhancements are ascribed to the in situ inhibition on carrier recombination induced by interfacial defects during the solution processing, which enables about 2/3 reduction of calculated recombination rate. Thus, the green solvent route shows the great potential toward environmental‐friendly manufacturing.

Using density functional theory and nonequilibrium Green's function (NEGF) formalism, we have theoretically investigated the binding of organic donor, acceptor and metal atoms on graphene sheets, and revealed the effects of the different noncovalent functionalizations on the electronic structure and transport properties of graphene. The adsorptions of 2,3-dichloro-5,6-dicyano-1,4-benzoquinone (DDQ) and tetrathiafulvalene (TTF) induce hybridization between the molecular levels and the graphene valence bands, and transform the zero-gap semiconducting graphene into a metallic graphene. However, the current versus voltage (I-V) simulation indicates that the noncovalent modifications by organic molecules are not sufficient to significantly alter the transport property of the graphene for sensing applications. We found that the molecule/graphene interaction could be dramatically enhanced by introducing metal atoms to construct molecule/metal/graphene sandwich structures. A chemical sensor based on iron modified graphene shows a sensitivity two orders of magnitude higher than that of pristine graphene. The results of this work could help to design novel graphene-based sensing or switching devices.

The efficiencies of the hybrid organic-inorganic perovskite solar cells have been rapidly approaching the benchmarks held by the leading thin-film photovoltaic technologies. Arguably, one of the most important factors leading to this rapid advancement is the ability to manipulate the microstructure of the perovskite layer and the adjacent functional layers within the device. Here, an analysis of the nucleation and growth models relevant to the formation of perovskite films is provided, along with the effect of the perovskite microstructure (grain sizes and voids) on device performance. In addition, the effect of a compact or mesoporous electron-transport-layer (ETL) microstructure on the perovskite film formation and the optical/photoelectric properties at the ETL/perovskite interface are overviewed. Insight into the formation of the functional layers within a perovskite solar cell is provided, and potential avenues for further development of the perovskite microstructure are identified.