The deep-level traps induced by charged defects at the grain boundaries (GBs) of polycrystalline organic-inorganic halide perovskite (OIHP) films serve as major recombination centres, which limit the device performance. Herein, we incorporate specially designed poly(3-aminothiophenol)-coated gold (Au@PAT) nanoparticles into the perovskite absorber, in order to examine the influence of plasmonic resonance on carrier dynamics in perovskite solar cells. Local changes in the photophysical properties of the OIHP films reveal that plasmon excitation could fill trap sites at the GB region through photo-brightening, whereas transient absorption spectroscopy and density functional theory calculations correlate this photo-brightening of trap states with plasmon-induced interfacial processes. As a result, the device achieved the best efficiency of 22.0% with robust operational stability. Our work provides unambiguous evidence for plasmon-induced trap occupation in OIHP and reveals that plasmonic nanostructures may be one type of efficient additives to overcome the recombination losses in perovskite solar cells and thin-film solar cells in general.

Department of Applied Physics The Hong Kong Polytechnic University Hung Hom Kowloon Hong Kong China

Department of Materials Science and Engineering City University of Hong Kong Kowloon Hong Kong China

Institute of Photovoltaics Department of Materials Science and Engineering Nanchang University Nanchang 330031 China

Institute of Physical Engineering Brno University of Technology Technická 2 Brno 616 69 Czech Republic

Laboratory for Nanophotonics Department of Physics and Astronomy Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Rice University Houston Texas 77005 USA

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Light Sci Appl. 2022 Jan 18;11(1):18. doi: 10.1038/s41377-022-00712-z. PubMed

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