Strain engineering of two-dimensional (2D) material interfaces represents a powerful strategy for enhancing the electrocatalytic activity of water splitting. However, maintaining catalytic stability under various harsh conditions by introducing interface strain remains a great challenge. The catalyst developed and evaluated herein comprised Ir clusters dispersed on 2D NiO nanosheets (NSs) derived from metal organic frameworks (Ir@NiO/C BDC ), which displays a high activity and stability under all pH conditions, and even a change of only 1% in the applied voltage is observed after continuous electrocatalytic operation for over 1800 h under alkaline conditions. Through combined experimental and computational studies, we found that the introduced interfacial strain contributes to the outstanding structural stability of the Ir@NiO/C BDC catalyst, arising from its increased Ir and Ni vacancy formation energies, and hence suppressing its leaching. Moreover, strain also enhances the kinetically sluggish electrocatalytic water splitting reaction by optimizing its electronic structure and coordination environment. This work highlights the effects of strain on catalyst stability and provides new insights for designing widely applicable electrocatalysts.
Perovskite solar cells have achieved remarkable progress in photovoltaic performance, driven by advancements in interface engineering. The buried interface between the electron transport layer and the perovskite layer is particularly critical, as it governs both perovskite crystallization and the formation of residual strain. In this study, the buried interface in printable mesoscopic perovskite solar cells (p-MPSCs) based on a triple-mesoporous scaffold of TiO 2 /ZrO 2 /carbon is reconstructed by employing dodecaethylene glycol (DEG), a long chain molecule rich in polar oxygen atoms, to enhance device performance. Treating the scaffold with DEG optimizes the wettability sequence across the three layers by improving the TiO 2 surface's wettability, facilitating the preferential crystallization of perovskite in the underlying TiO 2 layer. Moreover, the DEG layer effectively buffers residual strain and suppresses detrimental defects at the interface. As a result, p-MPSCs with the optimized interface achieve a power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 20.27% and retain over 92% of their initial PCE after 500 h of continuous operation under maximum power point tracking.
Mixed-halide perovskites are emerging as excellent photovoltaic candidates because of their tunable bandgaps for semitransparent and tandem perovskite solar cells. However, the notorious film quality originated from the rapidly downward crystallization process susceptibly propagates enormous detrimental defects, which deteriorate the photovoltaic performance and accelerate halide segregation. To address this issue, herein, a multilayer alkalis-intercalated-vermiculite is employed as pre-buried interface modifier to regulate the perovskite lattice property. The matchable lattice structure between perovskite and vermiculite by forming Pb─O bond not only releases the interfacial strain during the film growth but also the embedded alkalis ions can gradually diffuse into perovskite lattice to form a favorable vertical gradient owing to the weak interlamellar van der Waals interaction, playing bis-roles of atomical lubricant and ion-reservoir to eliminate detrimental defects. As a result, the film quality and lattice stability is significantly improved with suppressed phase segregation for mixed-halide perovskites, accompanying a champion efficiency of 11.42% for carbon-based CsPbIBr 2 device, 15.25% for carbon-based CsPbI 2 Br device and 23.17% for p-i-n inverted (Cs 0.05 MA 0.05 FA 0.9 )Pb(I 0.93 Br 0.07 ) 3 cell. This work provides a new strategy on buried interface engineering for making high-efficiency and stable perovskite platforms.
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