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Despite the outstanding role of conjugated polyelectrolytes (CPEs) in organic solar cells, the use of CPEs in perovskite solar cells has rarely been reported due to instability issues of the material itself under operating conditions.

Correction for ‘Conjugated polyelectrolytes for stable perovskite solar cells based on methylammonium lead triiodide’ by Yong Ryun Kim et al., J. Mater. Chem. A, 2022, 10, 3321–3329, https://doi.org/10.1039/D1TA10185D.

Recently, the most efficient tandem polymer solar cells (PSCs) have used poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrenesulfonate) (PSS) as a p-type component of recombination layer (RL). However, its undesirable acidic nature, originating from insulating PSS, ofPSS drastically reduces the lifetime of PSCs. Here, we demonstrate the efficient and stable tandem PSCs by introducing acid-free self-doped conducting polymer (SCP), combined with zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnO NPs), as RL forPSS-free tandem PSCs. Moreover, we introduce an innovative and versatile nanocomposite system containing photoactive and p-type conjugated polyelectrolyte (p-CPE) into the tandem fabrication of an ideal self-organized recombination layer. In our new RL, highly conductive SCP facilitates charge transport and recombination process, and p-CPE helps to achieve nearly loss-free charge collection by increasing effective work function of indium tin oxide (ITO) and SCP. Because of the synergistic effect of extremely low electrical resistance, ohmic contact, and pH neutrality, tandem devices with our novel RL performed well, exhibiting a high power conversion efficiency of 10.2% and a prolonged lifetime. These findings provide a new insight for strategic design of RLs using SCPs to achieve efficient and stable tandem PSCs and enable us to review and extend the usefulness of SCPs in various electronics research fields.

The importance of interfacial engineering as a new strategy for improving the power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) of planar-heterojunction (PHJ) perovskite solar cells is highlighted in this study. With our optimized interfacial modification, we demonstrated efficient PHJ perovskite solar cells with a high PCE of 12.2% using a sol–gel-processed ZnO ECL modified by [6,6]-phenyl C61 butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM).

A new architecture for manufacturing large-area polymer solar cells that does not produce concomitant aperture and Ohmic losses is presented. By introducing the innovative concept of metal-filamentary nanoelectrodes, which are vertically formed inside the main active layers, loss-free, widely expandable solar cells with the highest relative power conversion efficiency (ca. 90%) in organic photovoltaic systems are demonstrated.

Highly efficient P-I-N type perovskite/bulk-heterojunction (BHJ) integrated solar cells (ISCs) with enhanced fill factor (FF) (≈80%) and high near-infrared harvesting (>30%) are demonstrated by optimizing the BHJ morphology with a novel n-type polymer, N2200, and a new solvent-processing additive. This work proves the feasibility of highly efficient ISCs with panchromatic absorption as a new photovoltaic architecture and provides important design rules for optimizing ISCs.

Despite recent breakthroughs in power conversion efficiencies (PCEs), which have resulted in PCEs exceeding 22%, perovskite solar cells (PSCs) still face serious drawbacks in terms of their printability, reliability, and stability. The most efficient PSC architecture, which is based on titanium dioxide as an electron transport layer, requires an extremely high-temperature sintering process (≈500 °C), reveals hysterical discrepancies in the device measurement, and suffers from performance degradation under light illumination. These drawbacks hamper the practical development of PSCs fabricated via a printing process on flexible plastic substrates. Herein, an innovative method to fabricate low-temperature-processed, hysteresis-free, and stable PSCs with a large area up to 1 cm2 is demonstrated using a versatile organic nanocomposite that combines an electron acceptor and a surface modifier. This nanocomposite forms an ideal, self-organized electron transport layer (ETL) via a spontaneous vertical phase separation, which leads to hysteresis-free, planar heterojunction PSCs with stabilized PCEs of over 18%. In addition, the organic nanocomposite concept is successfully applied to the printing process, resulting in a PCE of over 17% in PSCs with printed ETLs.

Despite the recent unprecedented increase in the power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) of small-area devices (≤0.1 cm2 ), the PCEs deteriorate drastically for PSCs of larger areas because of the incomplete film coverage caused by the dewetting of the hydrophilic perovskite precursor solutions on the hydrophobic organic charge-transport layers (CTLs). Here, an innovative method of fabricating scalable PSCs on all types of organic CTLs is reported. By introducing an amphiphilic conjugated polyelectrolyte as an interfacial compatibilizer, fabricating uniform perovskite films on large-area substrates (18.4 cm2 ) and PSCs with the total active area of 6 cm2 (1 cm2 × 6 unit cells) via a single-turn solution process is successfully demonstrated. All of the unit cells exhibit highly uniform PCEs of 16.1 ± 0.9% (best PCE of 17%), which is the highest value for printable PSCs with a total active area larger than 1 cm2 .

We report a new method for developing a low-temperature solution processed vanadium oxide (s-VOx) and poly(4-styrene sulfonic acid) (PSS) composite to act as an efficient hole-transport layer (HTL) in polymer solar cells (PSCs). By compositing the s-VOx and PSS (s-VOx:PSS), the work function values of the s-VOx:PSS changed from 5.0 to 5.3 eV. Therefore, the energy level barrier between the HTL and organic active layer decreased, facilitating charge injection/extraction at the interfaces. In addition, the s-VOx:PSS films were denser and had more pin-hole-free surfaces than pristine s-VOx films, resulting in enhanced PSC performance due to significantly decreased leakage currents and excellent device stability in ambient condition. Because our approach of combining soluble transition metal oxide (TMO) and polymeric acid shows dramatically better performance than pristine TMO, we expect that it can provide useful guidelines for the synthesis and application of TMOs for organic electronics in the future.

G. Kim, H. Kang, H. Back, Prof. K. Lee School of Materials Science and Engineering Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology Gwangju 500–712 , Republic of Korea E-mail: klee@gist.ac.kr G. Kim, Dr. J. Kong, J. Kim, H. Kang, H. Back, Dr. H. Kim, Prof. K. Lee Heeger Center for Advanced Materials Research Institute for Solar and Sustainable Energies Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology Gwangju 500–712 , Republic of Korea E-mail: heejook@gist.ac.kr J. Kim, Prof. K. Lee Department of Nanobio Materials and Electronics Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology Gwangju 500–712 , Republic of Korea