Publication date: 17th February 2025
Organic halide perovskites have revolutionized photovoltaics, with power conversion efficiencies reaching 34.6% for perovskite/Si tandem cells and 26.7% for single-junction devices. Despite these advancements, the long-term stability of perovskite thin films remains a critical barrier to commercial viability. Methylammonium lead iodide (MAPI) perovskites, while promising due to their high absorption coefficient, tunable bandgap, and low-cost processing, degrade rapidly under environmental stressors such as light, moisture, oxygen, and temperature.
In this study, atomic force microscopy (AFM) was employed to investigate the degradation mechanisms of MAPI thin films. AFM provides high-resolution visualization of surface morphology changes, offering insights into features such as grain roughening and overall surface evolution over time. Controlled experiments were conducted under specific ambient conditions of temperature, humidity, and light exposure, enabling precise monitoring of degradation pathways.
Our findings reveal heterogeneous degradation patterns, with individual grains displaying pristine, partially degraded, and fully degraded regions. Surface roughness analysis shows broadening of the root mean square roughness distribution as degradation progresses, reflecting increased surface heterogeneity. Grains with layered, step-terrace structures degrade faster than smoother, featureless grains, highlighting the impact of grain morphology on stability.
Additionally, substrate material strongly influences degradation rates. Films on ITO-coated glass substrates exhibited significantly slower degradation compared to those on quartz or bare glass, suggesting that interfacial properties between the perovskite and substrate play a pivotal role in stability.
These results underscore the importance of grain morphology and substrate engineering in improving the longevity of perovskite-based devices. This work provides critical insights for optimizing synthesis techniques and ensuring the stability of high-performance perovskite solar cells.
We acknowledge the use of the CzechNanoLab research infrastructure (LM2023051) supported by the MEYS. Furthermore, we acknowledge the support of Czech Science Foundation Project No. 24-11652S.
nanoGe is a prestigious brand of successful science conferences that are developed along the year in different areas of the world since 2009. Our worldwide conferences cover cutting-edge materials topics like perovskite solar cells, photovoltaics, optoelectronics, solar fuel conversion, surface science, catalysis and two-dimensional materials, among many others.
Previously nanoGe Spring Meeting (NSM) and nanoGe Fall Meeting (NFM), MATSUS is a multiple symposia conference focused on a broad set of topics of advanced materials preparation, their fundamental properties, and their applications, in fields such as renewable energy, photovoltaics, lighting, semiconductor quantum dots, 2-D materials synthesis, charge carriers dynamics, microscopy and spectroscopy semiconductors fundamentals, etc.
International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics
International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics (HOPV) is celebrated yearly in May. The main topics are the development, function and modeling of materials and devices for hybrid and organic solar cells. The field is now dominated by perovskite solar cells but also other hybrid technologies, as organic solar cells, quantum dot solar cells, and dye-sensitized solar cells and their integration into devices for photoelectrochemical solar fuel production.
Asia-Pacific International Conference on Perovskite, Organic Photovoltaics and Optoelectronics
The main topics of the Asia-Pacific International Conference on Perovskite, Organic Photovoltaics and Optoelectronics (IPEROP) are discussed every year in Asia-Pacific for gathering the recent advances in the fields of material preparation, modeling and fabrication of perovskite and hybrid and organic materials. Photovoltaic devices are analyzed from fundamental physics and materials properties to a broad set of applications. The conference also covers the developments of perovskite optoelectronics, including light-emitting diodes, lasers, optical devices, nanophotonics, nonlinear optical properties, colloidal nanostructures, photophysics and light-matter coupling.
The International Conference on Perovskite Thin Film Photovoltaics Perovskite Photonics and Optoelectronics (NIPHO) is the best place to hear the latest developments in perovskite solar cells as well as on recent advances in the fields of perovskite light-emitting diodes, lasers, optical devices, nanophotonics, nonlinear optical properties, colloidal nanostructures, photophysics and light-matter coupling.