A joint research team led by Prof. YANG Guang, Member of the Otto Poon Charitable Foundation Research Institute for Smart Energy (RISE) and Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (EEE) of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), and Prof. HUANG Jinsong of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA, innovatively incorporated a reductive methylhydrazinium cation (Mhy+) into wide-bandgap (WBG) perovskite materials, opening a new path for the scalable fabrication of solar cells in ambient conditions. The ground-breaking research, titled “Reductive cation for scalable wide-bandgap perovskite solar cells in ambient air”, has been published in Nature Sustainability. The team has achieved major progress in terms of material improvement, performance breakthrough and stability enhancement. The researchers found that Mhy+ additive significantly reduces defect density while suppressing iodide oxidation and halide demixing, enabling scalable fabrication of efficient and stable WBG solar cells and modules in ambient air. The WBG solar cells developed by the team achieved a power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 23%, an open-circuit voltage of 1.28V, and a voltage loss of just 0.37V, setting new benchmarks for the field. The researchers also successfully fabricated 25 cm² mini-modules with a stabilised efficiency of 19.8%. These mini-modules, under accelerated aging conditions at 55±5°C, retained 94% of their initial efficiency after 700 hours of continuous light exposure, demonstrating exceptional long-term stability. This research addresses the technical challenges of scalable fabrication of solar cells in ambient conditions, making a significant step forward in the advancement of solar energy harvesting. Read the full paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-025-01529-5
| Research Units | Otto Poon Charitable Foundation Research Institute for Smart Energy |
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