Supramolecular bridging strategy enables high performance and stable organic–inorganic halide perovskite solar cells

The manipulation of grain boundaries in polycrystalline perovskites is an indispensable consideration for the photovoltaic performance and environmental stability of solar cells, because perovskite films obtained by solution process will inevitably introduce many defects in the grain boundaries. Although additives based on small molecules have proven to be effective defect passivators, their high volatility and diffusibility cannot satisfy the stability requirements of perovskite films. As an upgraded approach, herein, we introduced a supramolecular bridging strategy with 2,5-diaminobenzotrifluorid (DTF) molecular binder as the repeating unit to form a supramolecular-perovskite composite. The supramolecular binder plays a role of bridging the perovskite crystal grains, passivating the traps states of the perovskite films and producing excellent environmental stability, which is superior to the conventional additive engineering. As a result, the power conversion efficiency of the MAPbI3 solar cell has been significantly increased from 18.8% to 21.0 %. The perovskite solar cells with S-DTF maintaining 93% of their original efficiency for over 30 days (∼70% humidity) in air ambient without encapsulation, exhibiting an excellent long-term stability. This will inspire a wider range of ideas beyond the regular additive engineering for improving the performance of polycrystalline perovskite-based photoelectronic devices.