Abstract
The high cost and detrimental self-aggregation of conventional single-component fullerenes such as C60 and PCBM constitute a major obstacle to the commercialization of inverted perovskite solar cells (IPSCs). We report a kilogram-scale, one-pot synthesis of a multi-component fullerene composite (FC), comprising C60, a bis((3-methyloxetan-3-yl)methyl) malonate-C60 mono-adduct (BCM), and its bis-adduct (BCB). FC is obtained in 96% yields without complex column chromatography, significantly reducing production costs. Upon thermal annealing, BCM and BCB undergo cross-linking to form a robust encapsulation network that homogeneously incorporates C60, enhancing film stability and electron mobility. IPSCs incorporating cross-linked fullerene composite (CFC) demonstrate an impressive efficiency of 26.55%, surpassing that of PCBM-based devices (24.82%). Additionally, CFC-based devices maintain 96.0% and 95.1% of their initial efficiency after 1000 hours under ISOS-L-1 and ISOS-D-2 protocols, respectively. Notably, CFC demonstrates excellent performance across a range of device configurations, including wide-bandgap (1.68 eV and 1.77 eV) cells, large-area devices (1 cm2), and mini-modules (14.4 cm2).
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Acknowledgements
This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [52472201 and U25A20234 (C.T.)], Natural Science Foundation of Fujian Province [2025J010037 (C.T.)], and the Promotion Program for Young and Middle-aged Teacher in Science and Technology Research of Huaqiao University [ZQN-806 (C.T.)]. We would like to thank the support of the Instrumental Analysis Center of Huaqiao University.
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C.T. conceived the idea and supervised the work. E.H. and S.Cheng fabricated devices and analyzed the data. S.K. fabricated mini modules. E.H. performed XRD measurements and analyzed the data. S.Chen, Y.X., and S.Cheng performed MALDI-TOF-MS measurements and analyzed the data. Y.Q. performed the DFT calculations and analyzed the theoretical results. J.C. and X.C. contributed to the XPS test. J.Y., L.X., and X.Z. actively contributed to data analysis and discussions. E.H. and S.Cheng co-wrote the manuscript. C.T., Z.W., and T.B. revised the manuscript. All authors contributed to the discussion of the data.
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Hou, E., Cheng, S., Kong, S. et al. Kilogram-scale one-pot synthesis of multicomponent fullerene composites for efficient inverted perovskite solar cells. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-70022-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-70022-0
