Accelerating perovskite nucleation in vacuum quenching via additive engineering for scalable inverted perovskite solar cells in ambient air

Fabricating efficient perovskite modules is one of the prerequisites for perovskite industrialization, in which vacuum quenching is a necessary technology to regulate perovskite nucleation. In this work, we proposed an additive strategy by incorporating propylammonium chloride (PACl) into the perovskite precursor, achieving a high-quality perovskite film in ambient air. PACl is demonstrated to feasibly promote perovskite nucleation even without vacuum quenching in a wet film after coating. This effect of nucleation acceleration can also be synergistic with the vacuum quenching process, which optimizes the perovskite crystallization and reduces the residual PbI2 located at the buried interface. Owing to the optimized perovskite film with reduced defects, the small-area inverted perovskite solar cells achieved a power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 24.59%. The device also shows excellent stability with no performance decay after 2000 h of storage in air conditions. Moreover, the large-area perovskite module with an aperture area of 47.94 cm2 obtained a PCE of 20.24%, demonstrating the significance of our strategy for perovskite photovoltaic scalability.