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Nature Energy volume 10, pages 1371–1381 (2025)
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Formamidinium and caesium metal halide perovskites enable high efficiency in inverted perovskite solar cells, but uncontrolled crystallization limits their performance. Here we regulate the nucleation and growth of the perovskite through aromatic interactions between naphthalene ammonium salts and naphthalenesulfonates. The ammonium groups of the naphthalene ammonium salts occupy the formamidinium site, while the sulfonate groups of the naphthalenesulfonates coordinate with lead ions. Their naphthalene moieties form tight aromatic stacking adjacent to the [PbI6]4− octahedra. These interactions promote ordered out-of-plane crystallization along the (100) plane, enhancing defect passivation and carrier transport. We achieve a power conversion efficiency of 27.02% (certified 26.88%) for inverted solar cells. Encapsulated devices retain 98.2% of their initial efficiency after 2,000 h of maximum power point tracking under continuous illumination in ambient air. Furthermore, we demonstrate a certified steady-state efficiency of 23.18% for inverted mini-modules with an aperture area of 11.09 cm2 and a certified efficiency of 29.07% for all-perovskite tandem solar cells.
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W.C. acknowledges the financial support from the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (2021YFB3800104), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (W2412077 and U20A20252) and the Innovation Project of Optics Valley Laboratory (OVL2025YZ004). Z.L. acknowledges the National Natural Science Foundation of China (52473301), the Young Elite Scientists Sponsorship Program by CAST, the Natural Science Foundation of Hubei Province (2022CFA093), the Self-determined and Innovative Research Funds of HUST (2020kfyXJJS008), the Fundamental Research Support Program of Huazhong University of Science and Technology (2025BRB016) and the State Key Laboratory of Alternate Electrical Power System with Renewable Energy Sources (LAPS25001). Y.L. acknowledges the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2024YFF0507802 and 2024YFE0211400), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (12422401, 12074016 and 12274009) and the Excellent Youth Fund of Beijing Natural Science Foundation (JQ24009). Q.Z. acknowledges the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2024M751002) and the Postdoctoral Fellowship Program of China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (GZC20240528). J.W. acknowledges the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, HUST (2023JYCXJJ041). We thank the Analytical and Testing Center of HUST for the support of facilities for sample measurements. We thank the staff of the BL17B beamline (https://cstr.cn/31129.02.NFPS.BL17B) at the National Facility for Protein Science in Shanghai (https://cstr.cn/31129.02.NFPS), Shanghai Advanced Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, for their technical support in GIWAXS data collection and analysis. We are grateful for the support of the computing resources provided by the Center for Computational Science and Engineering at Southern University of Science and Technology.
These authors contributed equally: Qisen Zhou, Guoyu Huang, Jianan Wang, Tianyin Miao, Rui Chen.
Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China
Qisen Zhou, Jianan Wang, Tianyin Miao, Rui Chen, Sanwan Liu, He Zhu, Zhengtian Tan, Chenyang Shi, Xiaoxuan Liu, Zonghao Liu & Wei Chen
Optics Valley Laboratory, Wuhan, China
Qisen Zhou, Zonghao Liu & Wei Chen
State Key Laboratory of Materials Low-Carbon Recycling, College of Materials Science and Engineering, Beijing University of Technology, Beijing, China
Guoyu Huang, Manling Sui & Yue Lu
Hoffmann Institute of Advanced Materials, Shenzhen Polytechnic University, Shenzhen, China
Xia Lei & Jingbai Li
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China
Xia Lei & Jingbai Li
State Key Lab of New Ceramics and Fine Processing, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
Erxiang Xu & Yang Shen
Experimental Centre for Advanced Materials, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China
Qianqian Wang, Yihua Chen & Qi Chen
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W.C., Z.L., Y.L. and Q.Z. conceived the project and designed the experiments. W.C. and Z.L. directed and supervised the project. Q.Z., J.W. and R.C. fabricated the devices. Q.Z., J.W., R.C., T.M., S.L., H.Z., Z.T., C.S. and X. Liu performed the material and device characterizations. G.H., M.S. and Y.L. performed the TEM measurements. T.M. performed the in situ GIWAXS measurements. E.X. and Y.S. performed the AFM-IR measurements. Q.W., Y.C. and Q.C. performed the temperature-dependent dark conductivity measurements. X. Lei and J.L. performed the density functional theory calculations and theoretical analysis. W.C., Z.L., Y.L. and Q.Z. co-wrote the paper. All authors discussed the results and commented on the written manuscript.
Correspondence to Jingbai Li, Yue Lu, Zonghao Liu or Wei Chen.
The authors declare no competing interests.
Nature Energy thanks Yu Duan, Seok Joon Kwon and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.
Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary Figs. 1–60, Notes 1–7 and Tables 1–6.
Source data for Supplementary Figs. 23d, 44, 45, 53, 54, 55 and 58.
Source data for Fig. 4a,b,d–f.
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Zhou, Q., Huang, G., Wang, J. et al. Aromatic interaction-driven out-of-plane orientation for inverted perovskite solar cells with improved efficiency. Nat Energy 10, 1371–1381 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-025-01882-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-025-01882-x
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