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Nature Materials (2025)
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Perovskite/perovskite/silicon triple-junction solar cells offer notable potential for high power output at low cost, yet their development is hindered by the phase instability of perovskites, which limits both device reproducibility and performance. The ~1.50-eV formamidinium lead triiodide (FAPbI3)-based middle layer degrades during subsequent fabrication steps, and the ~2.0-eV bromide-rich top layer suffers from light-induced phase segregation. Here we address these challenges by introducing ammonium propionic acid to enhance the phase stability in both perovskite layers. This strategy raises the phase transition energy barrier and suppresses vacancy defect formation through additional bonding with lattice cations. These improvements mitigate phase instabilities and enhance the power conversion efficiency of devices based on the modified perovskite films. As a result, perovskite/perovskite/silicon triple-junction solar cells achieve a power conversion efficiency of 28.7% on a 1-cm2 aperture area, with substantially improved reproducibility.
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We acknowledge the use of the KAUST Solar Center and the support of its staff, and J. Xu is involved in the DFT discussion. Computing resources used in this work were provided by the National Center for High Performance Computing of Turkey (UHeM) under grant number 1015902023, supporting I.Y. and C.D. The KAUST team was supported by the KAUST Office of Sponsored Research (OSR) under award numbers URF/1/4350-01, URF/1/4669-01 and URF/1/5035-01.
Erkan Aydin
Present address: Department of Chemistry, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU), Munich, Germany
Jiang Liu
Present address: College of Energy, Soochow Institute for Energy and Materials InnovationS (SIEMIS), Soochow University, Suzhou, People’s Republic of China
Center for Renewable Energy and Storage Technologies (CREST), King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Fuzong Xu, Erkan Aydin, Esma Ugur, Jiang Liu, Xuechun Zhang, Arsalan Razzaq, Lujia Xu, Marco Marengo, Badri Vishal, Adi Prasetio, Anand Subbiah, Anil Pininti, Thomas Allen & Stefaan De Wolf
Department of Physics, Marmara University, Istanbul, Turkey
Ilhan Yavuz & Caner Deger
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F.X. conceived the idea. F.X. and E.A. wrote the paper. F.X. developed all the 1-J and tandem solar cells, performed all the characterizations if not claimed specifically, and analysed all the data and performed all the calculations with the other co-authors. F.X. and J.L. performed the J–V and EQE measurements of 3-J solar cells and the transient photocurrent decay. I.Y. and C.D. performed the DFT calculations. E.U. conducted the QFLS measurement. L.X. performed the S–Q limit simulation. B.V. performed the STEM analysis. X.Z. conducted the XRD characterization. T.A. performed the SPICE simulations. A.R., T.A. and A. Pininti contributed to the Si bottom-cell fabrication. S.D.W. supervised the project and secured funding for this research. A. Prasetio. and A.S. contributed to the schematics and data analysis. M.M. contributed to the encapsulation of devices and stability measurement. All authors participated in the paper preparation.
Correspondence to Fuzong Xu or Stefaan De Wolf.
The authors declare no competing interests.
Nature Materials thanks Yi Hou, Christian Wolff and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.
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Xu, F., Aydin, E., Yavuz, I. et al. Stabilized perovskite phases enabling efficient perovskite/perovskite/silicon triple-junction solar cells. Nat. Mater. (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-025-02367-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-025-02367-8
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