As a new member of carbon materials following the presence of fullerene, carbon nanotubes and graphene, graphdiyne (GD) is firstly invented by Chinese scientists with independent intellectual property rights.

Meanwhile, progress has been made on the rising star in photovoltaics-perovskite solar cells (PSCs) with skyrocketing efficiency. However, the commercialization of PSCs still face conventional challenges of inherent hysteresis and stability.

Recently, Prof. JIU Tonggang's group from Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology of Chinese Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with LI Yuliang, firstly reported that the introduction of certain amount of graphdiyne (25%) as a host material in perovskite solar cells can successfully push the device efficiency up to 21.01%, achieving multiple collaborative effects of highly crystalline qualities, large domain sizes and few grain boundaries.

Furthermore, researchers revealed that the current-voltage hysteresis was negligible, and device stability was appreciably improved as well.

It is found that graphdiyne, as the host active material, significantly affects the crystallization, film morphology and a series of optoelectronic properties of perovskite active layer.