Yttrium oxide engineered substrate enables improved durability for perovskite solar cells
Transparent conductive oxides (TCOs)-foundation of perovskite solar cells (PSCs)-have long been assumed to be stable, and thus their impact on device longevity is frequently overlooked. Herein, we unveil that fluorine doped tin oxide (FTO) suffers from instability under operational stress, exacerbating PSC stability issue. To address this issue, we propose a universal interface engineering strategy employing a scalable thermal evaporation followed by natural oxidation to form an atomically bonded yttrium oxide (Y<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub>) to strengthen structural stability of FTO. Evaporated yttrium effectively anchors a portion of lattice oxygen within FTO, preventing elemental dissociation. Moreover, the formed Y<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub> featured conformal deposition on rough FTO increases the interfacial adhesion energy, establishing a robust barrier against ion diffusion and carrier nonradiative recombination loss. This approach fortifies the structural integrity of the PSC, leading to dramatically improved operational stability. Unencapsulated devices exhibit negligible performance loss after 1,200 h of continuous illumination. Notably, we achieve power conversion efficiencies of 26.48% (certified at 26.12%) in regular (n-i-p) architectures, 26.34% in inverted (p-i-n) configurations, and 28.47% in tandem structures-among one of the highest reported in their respective categories-underscoring its strong generality and potential for commercialization.
Authors
- Guojia Fang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3880-9943)
- Wei Ai (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3177-6122)
- Yi Hou (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1532-816X)
- Kailian Dong (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0005-4957-5723)
- Wenlong Shao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0000-6550-2800)
- Weijun Ke (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2600-5419)
- Fang Yao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6096-5459)
- Chen Tao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6410-6208)
- Annamaria Petrozza (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6914-4537)
- Xuzhi Hu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9246-7040)
- Jianwei Zhao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8901-8447)
- Nengxu Li
- Guoyi Chen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0001-1745-8275)
- Yansong Ge
- Chen Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4296-6888)
- Guang Li (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7344-1814)
- Xiaojuan Cao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5437-5612)
- Haibing Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6811-7262)
- Zhenhua Yu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0832-2384)
- Songzhan Li
- Xingyu Xiong (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6430-3823)
- Zhimiao Zheng
Institutions
- National University of Singapore (SG)
- Wuhan University of Technology (CN)
- Huawei Technologies (China) (CN)
- Wuhan University (CN)
- Wuhan Textile University (CN)
- Center for Nano Science and Technology (IT)
- South China University of Technology (CN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Nature Communications
- Published
- 2025-10-28
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-64548-y
- Primary Topic
- Perovskite Materials and Applications
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- Hubei Provincial Department of Education
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- Natural Science Foundation of Hubei Province
- Wuhan University
- Wuhan Textile University