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Bioinspired stability enhancement in deuterium-substituted organic-inorganic hybrid perovskite solar cells

In hybrid perovskite solar cells (PSCs), the reaction of hydrogens (H) located in the amino group of the organic A-site cations with their neighboring halides plays a central role in degradation. Inspired by the retarded biological activities of cells in heavy water, we replaced the light H atom wit...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PNAS nexus 2023-05, Vol.2 (5), p.pgad160-pgad160
Main Authors: Tong, Jinhui, Li, Xun, Wang, Jianxin, He, Haiying, Xu, Tao, Zhu, Kai
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:In hybrid perovskite solar cells (PSCs), the reaction of hydrogens (H) located in the amino group of the organic A-site cations with their neighboring halides plays a central role in degradation. Inspired by the retarded biological activities of cells in heavy water, we replaced the light H atom with its abundant, twice-as-heavy, nonradioactive isotope, deuterium (D) to hamper the motion of H. This D substitution retarded the formation kinetics of the detrimental H halides in Pb-based PSCs, as well as the H bond-mediated oxidation of Sn in Sn-Pb-based narrow-bandgap PSCs, evidenced by accelerated stability studies. A computational study indicated that the zero point energy of D-based formamidinium (FA) is lower than that of pristine FA. In addition, the smaller increase in entropy in D-based FA than in pristine FA accounts for the increased formation free energy of the Sn vacancies, which leads to the retarded oxidation kinetics of Sn . In this study, we show that substituting active H with D in organic cations is an effective way to enhance the stability of PSCs without sacrificing photovoltaic (PV) performance. This approach is also adaptable to other stabilizing methods.
ISSN:2752-6542
2752-6542
DOI:10.1093/pnasnexus/pgad160