Dr. Chingbin Fei, Dr. Jinsong Huang, and a team of collaborators from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (and University of Colorado-Boulder) have identified how device interlayers were 'poisoning' perovskite solar cells over time, and developed a fix for the problem.
Many perovskite devices use interlayers between the perovskite, and transparent conductive oxide (TCO) layers that 'help' pull positive charges out of the perovskite. These interlayers degrade from exposure to UV and environmental contaminants, causing a drop in the performance of the device.
The researchers created a new version of this thin 'helper' layer "containing a combination of two molecules that sticks much more tightly to the electrode surface."
