Tungstate-mediated In-situ Passivation of Grain Boundary Grooves in Perovskite Solar Cells

Possessed with advantageous optoelectronic properties, perovskites have boosted the rapid development of solution-processed solar cells. The performance of perovskite solar cells (PSCs) is significantly weakened by the carrier loss at grain boundary grooves (GBGs); however, it receives limited attention and there lacks effective approach to solve this issue. Herein, for the first time, we constructed the tungstate/perovskite heterointerface via a “two step” in situ reaction approach that provides effective defect passivation and ensures efficient carrier dynamics at the GBGs. The exposed perovskite at grain boundaries is converted to wide-band-gap PbWO₄ via an in-situ reaction between Pb²⁺ and tungstate ions, which passivate defects due to the strong ionic bonding. Moreover, recombination loss is further suppressed via the heterointerface energetics modification based on an additional transformation from PbWO₄ to CaWO₄. PSCs based on this groove modification strategy showed good universality in both normal and inverted structure, with an improved efficiency of 23.25 % in the n-i-p device and 23.33 % in the p-i-n device. Stable power output of the modified device could maintain 91.7 % after around 1100 h, and the device efficiency could retain 92.5 % after aging in air for around 2110 h, and 93.1 % after aging at 85 °C in N₂ for 972 h.