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Additive-assisted liquid medium annealing relieving strains in perovskite solar cells for improved stability

Nature Energy (2026) Cite this article

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Abstract

Annealing, while indispensable for achieving high-quality perovskite crystals, introduces strain into the material, undermining the stability of perovskite solar cells. Here we incorporate 1,4-butanesultam as an additive into the perovskite precursor film to address this issue. During annealing, the additive liquifies and promotes grain boundary reconstruction and crystal reorganization, resulting in large, strain-free perovskite grains. The liquid state also facilitates the conformal deposition of the self-assembled molecules that serve as a hole transport layer at the bottom surface of the perovskite, further minimizing tensile strain. The resulting solar cell achieves a power conversion efficiency of 26.79% and retains 95% of its initial efficiency after 1,000 h of ISOS-V-2 testing, as well as 98% after 1,500 h of diurnal cycling between dark at 20 °C and light at 85 °C.

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Fig. 1: Microstrain regulation via liquid medium.
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Fig. 2: Tensile strain regulation and optoelectronic properties.
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Fig. 3: Devices characterization and large-scale film deposition.
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Fig. 4: Stability investigation under complex stimulates.
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Acknowledgements

This work is financially supported by the Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Fund (2024B1515120023, F.H.), the Guangdong Pearl River Talent Program (2021ZT09L400, Y.-B.C.) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (52322315 and 22279099, T.B.). VMD was developed by the Theoretical and Computational Biophysics Group in the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Center for Advanced Thin Film Photovoltaics, State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, People’s Republic of China

    Xiaofeng Gao, Xuefei Jia, Chao Wang, Tongle Bu, Yi-Bing Cheng & Fuzhi Huang

  2. International School of Materials Science and Engineering, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, People’s Republic of China

    Xiaofeng Gao

  3. Foshan Xianhu Laboratory, Foshan, People’s Republic of China

    Xiaofeng Gao, Yanping Mo, Qi Li, Yi-Bing Cheng & Fuzhi Huang

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Contributions

F.H., Q.L. and T.B. designed and supervised the project. X.G. conducted the main experiments and analysed the data. X.J., C.W. and Y.M. contributed to the characterization of the optoelectronic properties of perovskite films. Y.-B.C. provided valuable suggestions for testing the mechanical properties of films. All authors contributed to the discussions about the paper. X.G. wrote the paper. All authors discussed the results and revised the paper.

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Correspondence to Qi Li, Tongle Bu or Fuzhi Huang.

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Gao, X., Jia, X., Mo, Y. et al. Additive-assisted liquid medium annealing relieving strains in perovskite solar cells for improved stability. Nat Energy (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-026-02072-z

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