Over the last decade, perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have achieved record efficiencies rivaling or surpassing conventional silicon devices. Yet despite this rapid progress, a major obstacle remains: stability under real-world operating conditions. Continuous exposure to sunlight causes heat accumulation, triggering ion migration, lattice distortion, and irreversible degradation. Conventional approaches such as defect passivation and encapsulation improve durability but do not fully address the intrinsic problem of heat generation within the perovskite layer. Effective thermal management—ensuring rapid heat dissipation—has become a crucial step toward making PSCs commercially viable. Due to these challenges, deeper research on crystal facet engineering for temperature-resilient PSCs is required.
A research team from Shandong University of Science and Technology, Yunnan Normal University, and collaborating institutions has reported (DOI: 10.1016/j.esci.2025.100372) a novel facet-orientation strategy for PSCs in eScience (published online May, 2025). By introducing methylamine chloride to control crystallization, they achieved perovskite films dominated by the (100) crystal facet, which enhances thermal conductivity and reduces heat accumulation. The resulting inverted solar cells reached 25.12% efficiency and displayed remarkable operational stability, offering a pathway toward scalable, temperature-insensitive solar technology.
The study combined theoretical modeling and experimental fabrication to investigate the role of crystal orientation in thermal transfer within Cs0.03FA0.97PbI3 perovskite films. Density functional theory calculations showed that the (100) facet possesses superior heat transport properties compared to the (110) and (111) facets. Guided by this insight, the researchers incorporated methylamine chloride during film preparation to favor (100) facet growth. Measurements confirmed that thermal conductivity increased from 1.005 to 1.068 W m⁻¹ K⁻¹, lowering the device’s equilibrium temperature by 5.25 °C. Performance testing demonstrated that the (100)-oriented devices not only reached a certified efficiency of 25.12% but also showed minimal efficiency drop with rising temperature—reducing the temperature coefficient from –0.564 to –0.0575% K⁻¹. Stability evaluations revealed that the optimized cells retained more than 96% of initial efficiency after 2,280 hours of storage, 90% after 1,128 hours of heat aging, and over 92% after 1,088 hours of continuous illumination. These results highlight facet orientation as a direct and effective route to suppress non-radiative recombination, improve carrier mobility, and boost both efficiency and durability.
“Heat management has long been a bottleneck for PSCs,” said corresponding author Prof. Qunwei Tang & Prof. Jialong Duan. “Our work demonstrates that by tailoring the crystallographic orientation of the perovskite film, we can simultaneously enhance efficiency and stability without relying solely on encapsulation. The (100) facet orientation not only facilitates faster heat dissipation but also reduces defect density, leading to more robust device operation. This approach provides a fundamental and scalable strategy for advancing perovskite photovoltaics toward real-world applications.”
The ability to engineer perovskite films with self-cooling properties marks an important milestone for the commercialization of perovskite solar technology. Outdoor solar modules often operate under harsh thermal conditions, where even small efficiency losses accumulate into substantial performance declines. By integrating facet engineering, future perovskite modules can maintain power output in hot climates, extend operational lifetimes, and reduce maintenance costs. This thermal management strategy also opens possibilities for pairing perovskite devices with tandem architectures, where long-term durability is essential. Ultimately, the findings strengthen the competitiveness of perovskites as a next-generation photovoltaic technology.
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References
DOI
10.1016/j.esci.2025.100372
Original Source URL
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esci.2025.100372
Funding information
The authors gratefully acknowledged financial support provided by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (62374105, 22179051, 62304124, 62204098), Special Fund of Taishan Scholar Program of Shandong Province (tsqnz20221141), Yunnan Provincial Science and Technology Project at Southwest United Graduate School (202302A0370009), the Key Applied Basic Research Program of Yunnan Province (202201AS070023), the Spring City Plan: the High-level Talent Promotion and Training Project of Kunming (2022SCP005), Project for Building a Science and Technology Innovation Center Facing South Asia and Southeast Asia (202403AP140015), Foundation of Key Laboratory of Advanced Technique & Preparation for Renewable Energy Materials, Ministry of Education, Yunnan Normal University (OF2022-01) and Yunnan Revitalization Talent Support Program.
About eScience
eScience – a Diamond Open Access journal cooperated with KeAi and published online at ScienceDirect. eScience is founded by Nankai University (China) in 2021 and aims to publish high quality academic papers on the latest and finest scientific and technological research in interdisciplinary fields related to energy, electrochemistry, electronics, and environment. eScience provides insights, innovation and imagination for these fields by built consecutive discovery and invention. Now eScience has been indexed by SCIE, CAS, Scopus and DOAJ. Its first impact factor is 36.6, which is ranked first in the field of electrochemistry.