Abstract
The industrial deployment of thin-film solar cells faces challenges under reverse bias, particularly concerning perovskite materials with poor reverse-bias stability. Meanwhile, the reverse-bias characteristics of organic solar cells (OSCs) remain underexplored. This study first elucidates the mechanism that reverse tunnelling in OSCs, fundamentally dominated by deep trap state within a bulk heterojunction, triggering reversible/irreversible breakdowns under reverse bias. Building on this, we demonstrated high-performance OSCs with superior irreversible breakdown voltage exceeding –35 V by modulating the deep trap state through suppressing an isolated acceptor cluster in the donor–acceptor intermix region. Moreover, through strategically shielding perovskite by OSC with suppressed reverse tunnelling, n–i–p perovskite–organic tandem solar cells maintain over 90% of the initial efficiency when subjected to –40 V. These tandem devices retain 90% and 97% of the initial efficiency after stressing at –20 V for 12 h and –4.5 V for 2,000 h, respectively, outperforming all existing thin-film solar technologies. The exceptional reverse-bias stability under shadowing conditions was further demonstrated in scalable perovskite–organic tandem solar cell minimodules.
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Acknowledgements
This work is supported by Research Grants Council of Hong Kong (project numbers 15307922, CRF C7018-20G and C4005-22Y) (G.L.), RGC Senior Research Fellowship Scheme (SRFS2223-5S01) (G.L.), Innovation and Technology Fund–Guangdong-Hong Kong Technology Cooperation Funding Scheme (GHP/380/22GD, MHP/020/23) (G.L.), NSFC-RGC Joint Research Scheme (N_PolyU567/24) (G.L.), National Natural Science Foundation of China (51961165102) (G.L.), the Hong Kong Polytechnic University Internal Research Funds: Sir Sze-yuen Chung Endowed Professorship Fund (8-8480) (G.L.), RISE (U-CDC6) (G.L.), Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Joint Laboratory for Photonic-Thermal-Electrical Energy Materials and Devices (GDSTC number 2019B121205001) (G.L.), Office of Naval Research under award number N00014-24-1-2107 (Jinsong Huang), Hong Kong Polytechnic University EEE Departmental Fund (4-ZZXK) (Z.R.), RI-iWEAR Strategic Supporting Scheme (1-CD94) (Z.R.), Innovation and Technology Fund ITF-ITSP (ITS/184/23) (Z.R.), National Natural Science Foundation of China (52303249) (J.W.), Guangdong government and the Guangzhou government for funding (2021QN02C110) (J.W.), the Guangzhou Municipal Science and Technology Project (numbers 2023A03J0097 and 2023A03J0003) (J.W.), HKUST Materials Characterization and Preparation Facility Guangzhou (MCPF-GZ) (J.W.) and Green e Materials Laboratory (GeM) (J.W.). J.W. thanks beamline BL40B2 at Super Photon ring-8 GeV (Spring-8), Japan, for providing beam times to perform the GISAXS measurements.
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Contributions
Jiaming Huang, Jinsong Huang and G.L. conceived the idea. L.H. participated in the design of the experiment. Jiaming Huang fabricated and characterized the OSCs. Jiaming Huang, Y.H., Z.R. and J.F. fabricated the n–i–p PSCs, POTSCs and modules. G.Y., L.C. and J.Z. participated in the fabrication of p–i–n PSCs and POTSCs. Jiaming Huang and G.Y. carried out the trap density of states measurement. W.S. and Z.G. measured the energy loss measurements. Q.L. performed the SEM measurement. C.Z. and J.Y. performed the PDS measurements. S.M., H.T.C. and S.-W.T. conducted the s-EQE measurement. B.Y. and Y.-K.P. performed the transmission electron microscopy measurements. Y.L. and J.W. carried out the UPS, GIWAXS, GISAXS and time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry measurements. X.S. and H.H. conducted the in situ measurements. H.Y. helped with the energy-level measurements. J.T. provided the perovskite–perovskite tandem solar cell device. A.S.P. and A.L.R. carried out the XPS measurement. G.L. supervised the research execution. Jiaming Huang, Z.R., Jinsong Huang and G.L. wrote the manuscript and all authors commented on the manuscript.
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Extended data
Extended Data Fig. 1 Schematic diagram depicting the thermal breakdown mechanism of the OSCs.
Left, hot spot generation; middle, heat diffusion; right, device degradation.
Extended Data Fig. 2 s-EQE spectra with Gaussian fitting of CT state and trap state based on different active layer systems.
(a) PTB7:PCBM; (b) PM6:IT-4F; (c) PM6:BTP-eC9; (d) PM6:PY-IT.
Extended Data Fig. 3 Statistics diagram of Nmax and VR,95 of different types of thin-film solar cells.
The column represents VR,95 value and scatter point represents Nmax value.
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Supplementary Notes 1–3, Figs. 1–70 and Tables 1–25.
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Sparking during irreversible thermal breakdown under reverse bias.
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Huang, J., Han, Y., Ren, Z. et al. Perovskite–organic tandem solar cells with superior reverse-bias stability. Nat. Mater. (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-026-02541-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-026-02541-6
