Interfacial Passivation for Enhanced Moisture Stability of Perovskite Solar Cells: Ammonium or Sulfonium?

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Contributors

Abstract

Following the remarkable advances in the performance of metal halide perovskite solar cells, recent research efforts have focused more on enhancing their long-term stability. Among the various factors that impact the device's lifetime, humidity-driven degradation plays an important role and can significantly lower the device performance within hours. It is generally considered that humidity-induced degradation proceeds via the formation of hydrogen bonds between the water molecules and the nitrogen atoms in widely used ammonium-based organic cations like methylammonium (MA) and formamidinium (FA). To mitigate this process, it has been suggested that an interfacial passivation using sulfonium – rather than the ubiquitously used ammonium – cations may enhance the device stability against moisture. This work explores the impact of a dual interfacial modification by sulfonium- and sulfoxonium-based cations versus two commonly used ammonium-based ones. By examining the interfaces using optical spectroscopy and electron microscopy and evaluating the performance and stability of the devices, it is demonstrated that sulfonium- and sulfoxonium-based cations do not offer a significant advantage over ammonium-based cations, with the latter leading to enhanced stability only in certain cases.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Article number2400956
JournalAdvanced materials interfaces
Volume12
Issue number14
Early online date28 Apr 2025
Publication statusPublished - 25 Jul 2025
Peer-reviewedYes

External IDs

ORCID /0000-0001-8423-6173/work/186180805

Keywords

Keywords

  • butylammonium iodide, interfacial modification, metal halide perovskite, moisture stability, phenethylammonium iodide, trimethylsulfonium iodide, trimethylsulfoxonium iodide