A universal ligand for lead coordination and tailored crystal growth in perovskite solar cells

Chemical environment and precursor-coordinating molecular interactions within a perovskite precursor solution can lead to important implications in structural defects and crystallization kinetics of a perovskite film. Thus, the opto-electronic quality of such films can be boosted by carefully fine-tuning the coordination chemistry of perovskite precursors via controllable introduction of additives, capable of forming intermediate complexes. In this work, we employed a new type of ligand, namely 1-phenylguanidine (PGua), which coordinates strongly with the PbI₂ complexes in the perovskite precursor, forming new intermediate species. These strong interactions effectively retard the perovskite crystallization process and form homogeneous films with enlarged grain sizes and reduced density of defects. In combination with an interfacial treatment, the resulted champion devices exhibit a 24.6% efficiency with outstanding operational stability. Unprecedently, PGua can be applied in various PSCs with different perovskite compositions and even in both configurations: n-i-p and p-i-n, highlighting the universality of this ligand.