Performance enhancement of perovskite solar cells for energy storage applications: Materials and device engineering

Abstract

Developing highly stable perovskite solar cells (PSCs) is an important prerequisite for their future use in energy-storage-related applications. However, interfacial degradation driven by ion migration and encapsulation failure under thermal and humid stress remain a major obstacle to durable PSC operation. In this work, a coordinated materials-and-device engineering strategy is developed to enhance PSC stability through the integration of silane self-assembly interfacial passivation, an SnO 2 buffer layer, low-temperature dynamic thermocompression encapsulation, and fluorosilicone edge protection. (3-Aminopropyl)triethoxysilane (APTES) treatment reduces interfacial defect density and suppresses ion-migration pathways, while the SnO 2 nanolayer improves energy-level alignment and alleviates interfacial strain. The dynamic encapsulation process further improves sealing integrity and thermomechanical compatibility, and the fluorosilicone overcoat enhances hydrophobicity and edge-level environmental protection. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy (UPS), and grazing-incidence X-ray diffraction (GI-XRD) analyses support the proposed interfacial coordination, work-function regulation, and lattice-strain mitigation effects. Under accelerated damp-heat aging at 85 °C and 85% relative humidity (RH), the optimized PSC devices retain over 92.5% of their initial power conversion efficiency after 1000 h, with a reduced trap-state density of 2.1 × 10 16 cm -3 . These results demonstrate that coordinated interface and encapsulation engineering can substantially improve the environmental durability of PSCs under application-relevant stress conditions and establish a practical device-level framework for stability enhancement.