Materials Futures
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Overview of operando stress monitoring and stress-guided self-healing in perovskite solar cells enabled by fiber-optic sensing.
Credit: Qidong Tai from Wuhan University and Ning Wang from Wuhan University of Technology.
Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have rapidly advanced, achieving efficiencies exceeding 27%, and are viewed as promising alternatives to traditional photovoltaic technologies. Despite this progress, their commercialization faces important challenges, mainly associated to its instability under environmental stressors such as UV light, heat, and moisture. Intrinsic photoinduced deterioration under ultraviolet (UV) irradiation accelerates device failure by initiating ion migration and exacerbating defect generation within the lattice. Crucially, this chemical instability is inextricably linked to mechanical degradation, where the loss of volatile breakdown products drives localized lattice volume shrinkage. This reduction induces localized tensile strain. Meanwhile, conventional electrical metrics exhibit a lagging response, registering efficiency declines only after severe microstructural flaws, fracture propagation, and irreversible phase separation occur. Therefore, real-time monitoring of these internal chemomechanical stress dynamics is essential for developing long-lasting, high-efficiency PSCs.
The Solution: Researchers developed an integrated diagnostic technique using dual FBG sensors embedded in carbon-based PSCs. The study reveals that stress evolves in two stages: rapid accumulation followed by relaxation. By mapping this, researchers identified a critical device power conversion efficiency (PCE) threshold where stress and efficiency decay intersect, serving as a crucial diagnostic indicator for the device’s recovery window. This stress-guided approach enabled targeted structural recovery. Incorporating 5 wt% of methylammonium iodide (MAI) into the carbon paste activated an in situ self-healing capability during the initial degradation phase. Functioning as a high-capacity chemical reservoir, MAI drives the solid-state diffusion of protective ions to continuously repair lattice iodine vacancies and replenish volatile organic cations lost to prolonged UV exposure. Devices leveraging this intervention exhibited a 12% PCE enhancement after a 30-minute dark recovery and achieved a 140% extension in their recoverable operational window. This study highlights the architecture’s commercial potential, paving the way for intelligent, stress-monitored next-generation PSCs with proactive lifecycle management.
The Future: Looking forward, the potential to incorporate distributed optical fibre networks into large-area perovskite modules opens avenues for spatial stress mapping and autonomous operation. The universal thresholds identified in this work can be transferred to various perovskite compositions, including mixed-halide and all-inorganic systems, broadening their applicability.
The integration of this precise operando diagnostic accuracy with automated power management holds significant potential for constructing autonomous solar arrays. Autonomous control loops can benchmark real-time internal stress against these universal thresholds to trigger prompt restorative interventions. This methodology shifts the industry paradigm from reactive maintenance to proactive lifecycle management.
The Impact: This study elucidates the chemomechanical causes of instability and provides a strong stress-monitoring framework for proactive lifecycle management of perovskite photovoltaics.
The research has been recently published in the online edition of Materials Futures, a prominent international journal in the field of interdisciplinary materials science research.
Reference: Weijin Chen, Zhengyang Ke, Junjun Jin, Jiahong Cheng, Qidong Tai, Ning Wang. Operando stress monitoring reveals critical reversibility thresholds in UV-degraded perovskite solar cells[J]. Materials Futures. DOI: 10.1088/2752-5724/ae628f
Materials Futures
10.1088/2752-5724/ae628f
Operando stress monitoring reveals critical reversibility thresholds in UV-degraded perovskite solar cells
21-Apr-2026
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Media Contact
Yan He
Dongguan Institute of Materials Science and Technology, CAS
heyan@dimst.ac.cn

Materials Futures


Copyright © 2026 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Copyright © 2026 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

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