Researchers have found a way to treat two kinds of electrical defect in perovskite solar cells at the same time. Earlier combinations could cause the chemicals to react with each other instead of treating the cell's defects. The new pairing and its device results were reported September 23 in Nature Chemistry.
The treatments are Lewis acids and Lewis bases, chemicals that can bind to different charged defects but can also bind to each other. The team chose bulky phosphine bases and fluorinated aromatic acids whose shapes limit their reaction with each other while leaving surface defects accessible to both. Spectroscopy and defect profiling support the researchers' account that the pair suppresses both kinds of charge-trapping sites.
The treated cells reached a reported power-conversion efficiency of up to 27.4%; a separate certified steady-state measurement was 25.8%. These cell-level figures do not establish performance in large modules or over extended operation.
Sources
- Shin et al., “Sterically gated Lewis acid and base pairs enable orthogonal defect passivation in perovskite solar cells,” Nature Chemistry (September 23, 2026)
- Illustrative photograph of a different perovskite sample: Dennis Schroeder / National Renewable Energy Laboratory, via Wikimedia Commons. U.S. Department of Energy work, public domain in the United States.
