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Bulk-heterojunction doping in lead halide perovskites for low-resistance metal contacts

Nature Materials (2026)Cite this article

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Abstract

Efficient carrier injection at metal–semiconductor interfaces is essential for probing intrinsic electronic properties and enabling high-performance devices. Thinning the Schottky barrier via contact doping is a cornerstone strategy in semiconductor technology for minimizing contact resistance (Rc). However, carrier doping in halide perovskites has remained elusive, and selective contact doping has not been achieved, resulting in excessive Rc that far exceeds the intrinsic material resistance. Here we report an effective contact-doping strategy by transferring Ag/Au electrodes onto single-crystal CsPbBr3 thin films using a low-energy van der Waals integration process. Moderate annealing (80–180 °C) during transfer enables silver diffusion into CsPbBr3, followed by its transformation into Ag2O clusters upon ultraviolet treatment, forming an Ag2O/CsPbBr3 bulk heterojunction. The Ag2O clusters embedded in CsPbBr3 act as interfacial electron acceptors, inducing a local hole density of ∼5 × 1017 cm−3 in the contact region. This markedly shrinks the Schottky barrier and enhances carrier injection, yielding a substantially reduced Rc of 26–70 Ω cm and a notably high two-terminal sheet conductance exceeding 225 µS at 190 K.

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Fig. 1: In situ doping process and charge-transfer mechanism.
Fig. 2: Characterizations of the p-doping effect by Ag2O in perovskite.
Fig. 3: Electrical performance of the LHP devices with doped contacts.
Fig. 4: Analysis of the local carrier density, injection mechanism and contact resistance at the doped contacts.

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Data availability

All data are available in the main text or the supplementary information. Source data for Figs. 1d, 2b–d,f, 3a–e and 4a–f are available from Figshare via https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.30957728 (ref. 55). Source data for Fig. 3f are listed in Supplementary Table 1. Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

X.D. acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation through grant DMR 2324943. H.W. acknowledges the use of Bridges-2 at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center for DFT calculations through allocation PHY230112 from the Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Coordination Ecosystem: Services & Support (ACCESS) programme, which is supported by US National Science Foundation grants number 2138259, 2138286, 2138307, 2137603 and 2138296.

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  1. These authors contributed equally: Laiyuan Wang, Boxuan Zhou.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Laiyuan Wang, Qi Qian, Yihong Ye, Bangyao Hu, Peiqi Wang, Zhong Wan, Dehui Zhang, Kijoon Bang, Shuanghao Zheng, Aamir Hassan Shah, Yiliu Wang, Yu Huang & Xiangfeng Duan

  2. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Boxuan Zhou, Ao Zhang, Jingxuan Zhou & Yu Huang

  3. School for Engineering of Matter, Transport and Energy, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

    Huan Wu

  4. California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI), University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Yu Huang & Xiangfeng Duan

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Contributions

X.D. conceived the research. L.W. and B.Z. performed device fabrication, characterization and data analysis. B.Z. also carried out the optical characterizations and device simulations. B.H. and Y.Y. assisted with the device fabrication and testing. H.W. carried out the DFT calculations. A.Z. and S.Z. performed the XPS measurements. Q.Q., Z.W., Y.W. and Y.Y. prepared the materials. P.W., D.Z., K.B., A.S., J.Z. and Y.H. discussed the data. L.W., B.Z. and X.D. co-wrote the manuscript. All authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Xiangfeng Duan.

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Nature Materials thanks Max Lemme, Maryam Mohammadi, Yong-Young Noh and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work

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Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–25, Table 1 and References.

Source data

Source Data Fig. 1

Calculated differential charge distribution.

Source Data Fig. 2

Characterizations of the p-doping effect.

Source Data Fig. 3

Electrical performance of the LHP device with doped contacts.

Source Data Fig. 4

Analysis of the local carrier density, injection mechanism, and contact resistance at the doped contacts.

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Wang, L., Zhou, B., Qian, Q. et al. Bulk-heterojunction doping in lead halide perovskites for low-resistance metal contacts. Nat. Mater. (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-026-02485-x

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