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Nature (2026)
Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) with power-conversion efficiencies comparable to established technologies hold huge promise for becoming the future photovoltaic technology, also given their versatility, low-cost and energy-efficient fabrication processes1. However, PSCs are not stable under moderate reverse bias2,3,4, an unavoidable situation under real-world operation, for instance, caused by partial shading of a module or installation with PSCs connected in series. Approaches to address this issue have focused on engineering the device architecture to enhance the breakdown voltage and mitigate the detrimental effects of reverse bias2,5,6. Here we present a completely different approach that fully solves the reverse-bias issue. With our Memsol, we developed a new concept of a solar cell with an integrated memristor, which protects the solar cell and simultaneously works as a bypass element. The memristor is realized by area-selective deposition of an additional metal–insulator stack and shares the perovskite and electrodes with the solar-cell part. Reverse-bias and shading tests show that the Memsol remains stable and automatically toggles between a low-resistance bypass state and full-efficiency solar-cell operation, dependent on the illumination and bias conditions. We anticipate that our Memsol concept, which we demonstrated on a nine-cell string in the lab, will be implemented in large-scale modules, accelerating their commercialization and potentially making external bypass diodes unnecessary.
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All data supporting the findings of this study are available within the paper, Extended Data and Supplementary Information.
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We acknowledge ScopeM for their support and assistance in this work. F.J. thanks C. Peng, Q. Q. Zhao and S. P. Pang (Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology) for guidance on PSC fabrication. F.J. gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Swiss National Science Foundation (grant no. 210276). This study was funded by the Horizon 2020 research and innovation program of the European Union (grant agreement no. 851676) and the Swiss National Science Foundation (grant nos. 219739 and 210276).
Institute of Computational Physics, Zürich University of Applied Science, Zurich, Switzerland
Mahdi Mohammadi, Fuxiang Ji, Tristan Sachsenweger, Kazem Meraji, Sharun Parayil Shaji & Wolfgang Tress
Department of Chemistry, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
Mahdi Mohammadi
Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences, ETH Zürich, Zurich, Switzerland
Tristan Sachsenweger
Department of Energy, The École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
Kazem Meraji
Department of Mathematical Modeling and Machine Learning, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
Sharun Parayil Shaji
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M.M. and F.J. fabricated the Memsol samples. M.M. carried out Memsol characterization and thermography measurements. M.M., K.M. and S.P.S. developed the hardware and software for the MPP measurement system and carried out the corresponding experiments. T.S. conducted the FIB and scanning electron microscopy experiments. W.T. secured funding and provided supervision. M.M. and W.T. administered the project. M.M. wrote the original draft. M.M., F.J., T.S. and W.T. reviewed and edited the paper.
Correspondence to Wolfgang Tress.
M.M. and W.T. are inventors on European patent no. 25 165 055.2 and an international patent application no. PCT/EP2026/052852. Covering the solar cell unit comprising a solar cell and a memristor and photovoltaic module reported here. The other authors declare no competing interests.
Nature thanks Jang-Sik Lee and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Peer reviewer reports are available.
Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
(a) The XRD pattern of (FA0.95MA0.05)0.95Cs0.05Pb(I0.95Br0.05)3 perovskite. (b) Current-voltage curves of the reference device before reverse bias under illumination, after imposing a constant reverse current density of 24 mA/cm2 (−2 mA) for 10 s and after applying a reverse bias of −4 V for one minute without limiting current to 24 mA/cm2 demonstrating a substantial reduction in performance of the reference cell to 0.38% and 0.84 %, respectively. Solid and dashed lines indicate the voltage sweep direction.
Schematic top view image of the Memsol demonstrating two possibilities of memristor integration into our solar cell layout where in (a) the memristor is placed within the solar-cell active area and in (b) the memristor is placed adjacent to the solar-cell active area. Panels (c–g) present 5 μm-wide cross-sectional SEM windows of a Memsol device with the memristor placed within the solar cell active area (a), sequentially moving from left to right/up to down (from the memristor toward the solar cell), while panel (h) shows the fused image spanning the entire region. For the Memristor cross-sectional SEM image shown in the main text (Fig. 1e), higher brightness and an additional denoising filter were applied to panel (c) to enhance the visibility of the polymeric layer. To show memristor and solar cell in one SEM image, the extension of the transition region (no Ag/PL 177 but SiO) has been minimized to around 10 µm. Commonly, it is larger to avoid any direct contact of the Ag with the solar cell (see Fig. 2 in the main paper). Panels (i and j) present cross sectional SEM image of the Memsol device where memristor (i) placed adjacent to the solar cell active area (j). Compared to the cross-sectional SEM image in Fig. 1e, a clear structural difference is observed in the memristive region, where the silver bottom electrode of this configuration is deposited on the region of the substrate, where ITO has been removed.
Upon application of a voltage step of −0.5 V, the device transitions from its high-resistance (off) state to its low-resistance (on) state, reaching 1 mA of current in approximately 10 ns and rising to 8 mA in less than 40 ns as the zoomed-in inset shows.
(a) The black curve shows the measured IPCE as a function of wavelength. The red curve represents the cumulative current density obtained by multiplying the IPCE data with the solar spectrum (photon flux) and integrating the product over the wavelength, yielding an estimated Jsc of 24 mA cm−2, in excellent agreement with the J–V measurement. (b) Set and reset voltage distributions obtained from 400 current–voltage measurements conducted on 10 Memsol devices under AM1.5 G illumination. (c) Statistics of Voc, Jsc, FF and PCE for 125 Memsols fabricated by three selective PL-177 deposition strategies: In Method 1 (M1) the cell area is masked either with conventional adhesive tapes or by first depositing NiOx and a SAM layer before PL-177 deposition, whereas in Method 2 (M2) a high-temperature-resistant blue dicing tape is used to minimize surface residue. Because the memristor-specific layers are thermally evaporated, the quality of the PL-177 layer largely determines device performance; the data reveal that Method 1 consistently produces lower PCE, driven by a reduced FF that is most plausibly linked to incomplete coverage of the hole-transport layer caused by masking-related residue. M1 and M2 were employed to integrate the memristor adjacent to the solar cell’s active region, whereas Method 3 (M3), based on lithography, was used for positioning the memristor directly within the active region of the solar cell. The hysteresis is defined as Unity minus the ratio between the PCE of forward (FW) and backward (BW) voltage sweep.
(a) Current–voltage characteristics plotted on a logarithmic scale and (b) current-density–voltage characteristics plotted on a linear scale for a Memsol device exhibiting an exceptional Voc of 1.205 V. This device demonstrates a PCE of 22.5%, with a Jsc of 23.3 mA/cm², a FF of 0.80, and a Voc of 1.205 V. (c) Electroluminescence (EL) measurements performed on the Memsol shown in (a), yielding an external EL efficiency of 3.8 % at 1.21 V. (d) IPCE spectrum and corresponding integrated photocurrent density of the device, yielding an estimated Jsc of 23.1 mA cm−2, in excellent agreement with the J–V measurement. (e) Room-temperature steady-state photoluminescence (PL) spectrum of the perovskite used in the Memsol structure.
(a) Current–voltage characteristics of the reference and Memsol devices during thermography imaging shown in Supplementary videos 1 and 2. (b) A frame from the temperature map video (Supplementary video 2) of the reference cell.
(a) To evaluate potential power loss arising from non-zero off-current in the memristor, simultaneous I–V measurements under illumination were performed using two independent ammeters to separately record memristor and solar cell currents. The off-state memristor current remained seven orders of magnitude below the solar cell photocurrent, corresponding to a parallel resistance of 1.5 × 109 Ω. This resistance exceeds the solar cell’s shunt resistance (~5 × 107 Ω, estimated from the dark curve in Fig. 2b) by approximately 30-fold, indicating that memristor leakage contributes negligibly to overall power loss. (b) Thermography map of the Memsol recorded under reverse bias, revealing the localized heating at the memristive component positioned adjacent to the solar cell’s active region.
The current density–voltage (J-V) curves of the (a) reference and (b) Memsol devices, measured before and after the experiment shown in Fig. 3a. (c) J-V curves of the Memsol device used in Fig. 3b, before and after the full cycling test. (d) J-V curves of the Memsol device used in Fig. 3e, before and after the full cycling test. (e) Same as the measurement in Fig. 3b, but for longer cycles (24 cycles with 1 h at −2 mA in the dark, 20 s under light, followed by 24 h at −2 mA and 20 s under light). Illumination cycles 10, 12, and 22 demonstrate a failure mode where the memristor turned on for a few seconds during illumination, leading to a temporary reduction in Voc. The resulting power loss over the shown cycles would remain below 3%, crudely estimated by assuming proportionality to Voc and calculated by time-integrating Voc and normalizing to a reference open-circuit voltage of 1.2 V.
(a) Evolution of device efficiency for reference and five Memsol devices during storage in the dark under N2 at 65 °C, periodically recorded through I–V measurements. (b) The set voltage of the Memsol as determined from the I–V curve in reverse bias. Error bars indicate variability across repeated measurements at each time point. In panel (a), symmetric error bars represent half of the 10–90th percentile range of replicate Memsol PCE traces. In panel (b), asymmetric error bars indicate the 10th and 90th percentiles of replicate set-voltage measurements relative to the main trace.
(a) Statistical data from solar cells with enlarged active areas show that devices incorporating mixed SAMs (Me-4PACz: 2PACz) exhibit higher efficiencies, primarily due to enhanced FF and Voc. These improvements likely arise from the superior surface coverage achieved by mixed SAMs compared to single-SAM (Me-4PACz). (b) Photograph of the minimodule loaded with nine enlarged cells. A small black shutter positioned at the top-left of the cap is used to shade one Memsol. (c) Photograph of the minimodule with the shaded Memsol. (d + e) Photograph of the minimodule placed inside the glovebox, with the LEDs and their cooling fan positioned above, shown with (d) the shutter closed and with (e) the shutter open. (f) Photograph of the enlarged Memsol device used for the MPP measurements, with an active area of 0.65 cm².
Temperature map video of the Memsol under reverse bias.
Temperature map video of the reference cell under reverse bias.
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Mohammadi, M., Ji, F., Sachsenweger, T. et al. Integrated memristor for mitigating reverse-bias in perovskite solar cells. Nature (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10275-3
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