Employees of the laboratory of new materials for solar energy of the Faculty of Materials Science of Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov have developed an additive that radically increases the stability of hybrid perovskite solar cells — one of the most promising classes of thin-film solar cells.
Perovskites have a significant disadvantage: they quickly degrade under the influence of sunlight, high temperatures, humidity and oxygen. The researchers proposed introducing a small amount of 2-mercaptoethylammonium chloride (MEACl) into the material.
Encapsulated elements with the MEACl additive, when simultaneously exposed to a continuous solar simulator, a temperature of 85 °C and an atmosphere, demonstrate an average stability three times higher than that of control samples. When the temperature is lowered to 65 °C, the increase reaches four times, and the stable operating time approaches 2000 hours.
The head of the laboratory, Alexey Tarasov, explained that even a small concentration of the modifier significantly suppresses degradation mechanisms. According to him, the approach opens the way to creating significantly more reliable perovskite solar cells and other optoelectronic devices that are resistant to long-term exposure to aggressive environmental factors.