Efficiency from hole-selective contacts: Perovskite/silicon tandem solar cells must stabilize a perovskite material with a wide bandgap and also maintain efficient charge carrier transport. Al-Ashouri et al. stabilized a perovskite with a 1.68–electron volt bandgap with a self-assembled monolayer that acted as an efficient hole-selective contact that minimizes nonradiative carrier recombination. In air without encapsulation, a tandem silicon cell retained 95% of its initial power conversion efficiency of 29% after 300 hours of operation. Science , this issue p. 1300

The rapid rise of perovskite solar cells (PSCs) is increasingly limited by the available charge-selective contacts. This work introduces two new hole-selective contacts for p–i–n PSCs that outperform all typical p-contacts in versatility, scalability and PSC power-conversion efficiency (PCE). The molecules are based on carbazole bodies with phosphonic acid anchoring groups and can form self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) on various oxides. Besides minimal material consumption and parasitic absorption, the self-assembly process enables conformal coverage of arbitrarily formed oxide surfaces with simple process control. The SAMs are designed to create an energetically aligned interface to the perovskite absorber without non-radiative losses. For three different perovskite compositions, one of which is prepared by co-evaporation, we show dopant-, additive- and interlayer-free PSCs with stabilized PCEs of up to 21.1%. Further, the conformal coverage allows to realize a monolithic CIGSe/perovskite tandem solar cell with as-deposited, rough CIGSe surface and certified efficiency of 23.26% on an active area of 1 cm². The simplicity and diverse substrate compatibility of the SAMs might help to further progress perovskite photovoltaics towards a low-cost, widely adopted solar technology.

Improved stability and efficiency of two-terminal monolithic perovskite-silicon tandem solar cells will require reductions in recombination losses. By combining a triple-halide perovskite (1.68 electron volt bandgap) with a piperazinium iodide interfacial modification, we improved the band alignment, reduced nonradiative recombination losses, and enhanced charge extraction at the electron-selective contact. Solar cells showed open-circuit voltages of up to 1.28 volts in p-i-n single junctions and 2.00 volts in perovskite-silicon tandem solar cells. The tandem cells achieve certified power conversion efficiencies of up to 32.5%.