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Current state-of-the-art photovoltaics utilize high purity single-crystal semiconductors grown by sophisticated, high temperature crystal-growth processes. Alternative emerging solar cell technologies based on solution-processed materials promise to deliver power at lower cost, but so far have had limited success due to the presence of defects in the bulk and at the grain boundaries. Improving the crystal size and quality of solution-processed films could lead to unprecedented improvements in photovoltaic performance. However, large-scale crystal growth is challenging in solution-based deposition where molecular kinetics are limited by the low processing temperature. Here, for the first time we demonstrate organometallic perovskites thin-films composed of extra-ordinarily large crystalline grains (1-2 mm), fabricated using a new processing technique. The increase in the grain-size directly correlates to a dramatic increase in the efficiency, as a direct consequence of increased charge carrier mobility and reduction in defect densities. Our measured efficiency values approach ~18%, which is among the highest reported. These devices are extremely robust, exhibiting no degradation with voltage sweep direction or the rate at which the voltage was scanned. We anticipate that this technique for growing high quality large-area crystals at low temperature with low defect concentration will be universally applicable to a wide variety of other material systems thus providing a solution to a long-standing scientific challenge of overcoming polydispersity, defects and grain boundary recombination in solution-processed thin-films. From the perspective of the global photovoltaics community, these results are expected to lead the field towards the synthesis of wafer-scale crystalline perovskites necessary for the fabrication of high-efficiency single-junction and hybrid (semiconductor and perovskite) tandem planar cells. In addition, I will also discuss design principles that govern the photostability in these systems.

When studying the optical properties of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs), it is known that the dispersing agent(s) play an important role in the observed optical and electronic properties as well as in the separation of tubes. However, fundamental and applied reports are hindered by poor control over the interaction between the dispersant molecules and the nanotubes. Here I will discuss how interfacial chemistry affects the separation of SWCNTs and their optical properties. Compelling spectroscopic evidence has shown that surfactant composition, concentration, and structure are crucial factors to separate SWCNTs and obtain highly stable and fluorescent nanotube dispersions.

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