Neutron Resilience of Flexible Perovskite Solar Cells Using PTAA‐Derived Hole Transport Layers
Flexible perovskite solar cells hold promise of being an enabling technology for space missions: by reducing the encumbrance and weight of the payload's power system, launch costs can be minimized. The increased interest, however, must be accompanied by thorough testing under a broad range of space‐related sources of degradation and investigation of their effects on the layer stack. In this work, the resilience against atmospheric neutron radiation (<800 MeV) of flexible devices is studied, using two different hole transporting materials: a commercial PTAA and a PTAA‐based in‐house synthesized polymer. After 5 10 9 particles/cm 2 irradiation, 380 times higher than the yearly fast neutron fluence in low Earth orbit, the devices show good stability, with efficiency losses below 20%. Further investigation by light intensity‐dependent JV scans, hyperspectral photoluminescence microscopy, X‐ray diffraction, X‐ray reflectivity, and atomic force microscopy reveals that the neutron radiation mainly affects the perovskite/hole transport layer interface, to a different extent depending on the material. This work confirms that accelerated stress testing is an important tool to determine the feasibility of this technology for space applications and provides insights on the damages caused by atmospheric neutrons which will help inform future decisions for the fabrication of space‐resilient flexible perovskite solar cells.
Authors
- Francesca De Rossi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6591-5928)
- Claudia Barolo (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0627-2579)
- Carlo Cazzaniga (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3110-0253)
- Amanda Generosi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5940-389X)
- Kyle Frohna (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2259-6154)
- Matteo Bonomo (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1944-2664)
- Barbara Paci (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2854-7142)
- Francesca Brunetti (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2287-4545)
- Daniel Augusto Machado de Alencar (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2903-3175)
- Marco Ottavi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5064-7342)
- Farshad Jafarzadeh (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6722-9075)
- Pierluigi Quagliotto (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7984-6839)
- Paolo Rech (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9597-1007)
- Cullen Chosy
- Samuel D. Stranks (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8303-7292)
- Flavia Righi Riva (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2785-3321)
- Samyuktha Noola (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-2568-0839)
- Giulio Koch (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0001-0172-1462)
Institutions
- University of Rome Tor Vergata (IT)
- Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (GB)
- University of Trento (IT)
- University of Cambridge (GB)
- Institute of Science and Technology for Ceramics (IT)
- Institute of Structure of Matter (IT)
- National Interuniversity Consortium of Materials Science and Technology (IT)
- University of Turin (IT)
- University of Twente (NL)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Solar RRL
- Published
- 2025-07-01
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1002/solr.202500126
- Citations
- 1
- Primary Topic
- Perovskite Materials and Applications
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.73
Funders
- Dipartimenti di Eccellenza
- European Commission
- Agenzia Spaziale Italiana
- Regione Lazio
- National Outstanding Youth Science Fund Project of National Natural Science Foundation of China