Unlocking the Potential of Colloidal Quantum Dot/Organic Hybrid Solar Cells: Band Tunable Interfacial Layer Approach.

Hybrid colloidal quantum dot (CQD)/organic architectures are promising candidates for emerging optoelectronic devices having high performance and inexpensive fabrication. For unlocking the potential of CQD/organic hybrid devices, enhancing charge extraction properties at electron transport layer (ETL)/CQD interfaces is crucial. Hence, we carefully adjust the interface properties between the ETL and CQD layer by incorporating an interfacial layer for the ETL (EIL) using several types of cinnamic acid ligands. The EIL having a cascading band offset (ΔEC) between the ETL and CQD layer suppresses the potential barrier and the local charge accumulation at ETL/CQD interfaces, thereby reducing the bimolecular recombination. An optimal EIL effectively expands the depletion region that facilitates charge extraction between the ETL and CQD layer while preventing the formation of shallow traps. Representative devices with an EIL exhibit a maximum power conversion efficiency of 14.01% and retain over 80% of initial performances after 300 h under continuous maximum power point operation.

Strain-Induced Metallization and Defect Suppression at Zipper-like Interdigitated Atomically Thin Interfaces Enabling High-Efficiency Halide Perovskite Solar Cells.

Halide perovskite light absorbers have great advantages for photovoltaics such as efficient solar energy absorption, but charge accumulation and recombination at the interface with an electron transport layer (ETL) remain major challenges in realizing the absorbers' full potential. Here we report the experimental realization of a zipper-like interdigitated interface between a Pb-based halide perovskite light absorber and an oxide ETL by the PbO capping of the ETL surface, which produces an atomically thin two-dimensional metallic layer that can significantly enhance the perovskite/ETL charge extraction process. As the atomistic origin of the emergent two-dimensional interfacial metallicity, first-principles calculations performed on the representative MAPbI3/TiO2 interface identify the interfacial strain induced by the simultaneous formation of stretched I-substitutional Pb bonds (and thus Pb-I-Pb bonds bridging MAPbI3 and TiO2) and contracted substitutional Pb-O bonds. Direct and indirect experimental evidence for the presence of interfacial metallic states are provided, and a nonconventional defect-passivating nature of the strained interdigitated perovskite/ETL interface is emphasized. It is experimentally demonstrated that the PbO capping method is generally applicable to other ETL materials, including ZnO and SrTiO3, and that the zipper-like interdigitated metallic interface leads to about a 2-fold increase in the charge extraction rate. Finally, in terms of the photovoltaic efficiency, we observe a volcano-type behavior with the highest performance achieved at the monolayer-level PbO capping. This work establishes a general perovskite/ETL interface engineering approach to realize high-performance perovskite solar cells.