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Carrier management through electrode and electron-selective layer engineering for 10.70% efficiency antimony selenosulfide solar cells

Nature Energy volume 10, pages 857–868 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Antimony selenosulfide (Sb2(S,Se)3) solar cells suffer from charge carrier loss, which has limited the power conversion efficiency to around 10%. Here we develop a charge carrier management strategy using a textured fluorine-doped tin oxide substrate as the front contact to enhance light scattering and maximize charge generation. To overcome voids and shunt paths introduced by the textured surface, we insert a SnO2 layer by atomic layer deposition at the textured fluorine-doped tin oxide/CdS interface. This results in a conformal deposition of CdS and an optimal bandgap profile in the Sb2(S,Se)3 absorber, which improves charge transport and lowers charge recombination at the interface and in the bulk, respectively. We achieve a certified efficiency of 10.70% sodium selenosulfate-based Sb2(S,Se)3 solar cells with excellent stability. We prove the generality of the method demonstrating selenourea-based Sb2(S,Se)3 and upscaling the solar cells to 1 cm2. The results represent a step forward in the development of antimony-based solar cells.

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Fig. 1: Optoelectronic and structure properties of the substrate.
Fig. 2: Electron microscopy characterizations of the buried interface.
Fig. 3: Solar cell characterization.
Fig. 4: Defect and carrier transport analysis.

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All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the published article and its Supplementary Information. Additional data are available from the corresponding authors on request. Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (grant number 2024YFB4205300, Y.Z.), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number U1902218, Y.Z.). This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number 22275180, T.C.) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (grant number WK2490000002, T.C.). We thank D. M. Li from Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences for M-TPC/TPV test support and helpful discussions and X. Lou from Instrumentation and Service Center for Molecular Sciences at Westlake University for ARR measurements and helpful discussions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Photoelectronic Thin Film Devices and Technology, State Key Laboratory of Photovoltaic Materials and Cells, Engineering Research Center of Thin Film Optoelectronics Technology, Ministry of Education, Nankai University, Tianjin, People’s Republic of China

    Jiabin Dong, Qianqian Gao, Huizhen Liu, Zixiu Cao, Yue Liu, Han Xu, Rutao Meng, Jianpeng Li, Xuejun Xu, Zijun Zhang, Tianchi Li & Yi Zhang

  2. Key Laboratory of Weak-Light Nonlinear Photonics, Ministry of Education, School of Physics, Nankai University, Tianjin, People’s Republic of China

    Li Wu & Pan Zhang

  3. Hefei National Research Center for Physical Science at the Microscale, Deep Space Exploration Laboratory, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, School of Chemistry and Materials Science, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, People’s Republic of China

    Junjie Yang, Rongfeng Tang, Jianyu Li & Tao Chen

  4. Institute of Micronano Devices & Solar Cells, College of Physics & Information Engineering, Fuzhou University, Fuzhou, People’s Republic of China

    Weihuang Wang

  5. Dalian National Laboratory for Clean Energy, iChEM, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dalian, People’s Republic of China

    Shengzhong ‘Frank’ Liu

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  1. Jiabin Dong
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Contributions

J.D. and Y.Z. conceived of the original concept and designed the experiments. J.D., H.L. and Q.G. fabricated the devices and conducted the photovoltaic and optical characterization and analysis. J.Y., R.T., Jianyu Li and T.C. did the O-DLTS and TAS measurements and performed the analysis. Z.C., Y.L., H.X., R.M., Jianpeng Li, X.X. and Z.Z. assisted with the device fabrication, characterization and discussions. P.Z., T.L. and L.W. did the Rietveld analysis. W.W. participated in the GIXRD data analysis and provided constructive suggestions for refining the data analysis. J.D. and Y.Z. co-wrote the paper. Y.Z., L.W., T.C. and S.(F.)L. revised the paper with all authors commenting on the paper.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Tao Chen, Shengzhong ‘Frank’ Liu or Yi Zhang.

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Nature Energy thanks Guojia Fang and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–61, Notes 1–10, Tables 1–15 and Refs. 1–15.

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Supplementary data for Supplementary Figs. 8, 17h, 46, 51 and 53.

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Source data for Fig. 3a,b,e.

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Dong, J., Gao, Q., Wu, L. et al. Carrier management through electrode and electron-selective layer engineering for 10.70% efficiency antimony selenosulfide solar cells. Nat Energy 10, 857–868 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-025-01792-y

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