Revealing Interfacial Charge-Collection Losses in Perovskite Solar Cells Through Spectral Linearization of the Internal Quantum Efficiency

Herman Heffner^a^,^b, Kurt Taretto^c, Jose Roberto Bautista-Quijano^a^,^b, Yana Vaynzof^a^,^b

^aChair for Emerging Electronic Technologies, Technische Universität Dresden, Nöthnitzer Straße 61, 01187 Dresden, Germany

^bLeibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research Dresden (IFW), Helmholtzstraße 20, 01069 Dresden, Germany

^cPROBIEN, Dto. de Electrotecnia, CONICET, Univ. Nacional del Comahue, Argentina, Argentina

Proceedings of MATSUS Spring 2026 Conference (MATSUSSpring26)

G1 Advanced characterisation of perovskites: electrons and photons

Barcelona, Spain, 2026 March 23rd - 27th

Organizers: Stefania Cacovich and Giorgio Divitini

Oral, Herman Heffner, presentation 036
Publication date: 15th December 2025

Understanding charge-carrier collection in metal halide perovskite solar cells (PSCs) is essential to minimizing interfacial losses and achieving high device performance [1]. Despite competitive efficiencies, PSCs lack a simple and straightforward method to quantify interfacial collection losses from steady-state measurements. The presence of mobile ions and field screening complicates the interpretation of steady-state measurements, while advanced transient spectroscopies remain accessible only to specialized laboratories [2].

Here, we introduce a broadly applicable analytical framework to extract spatially resolved charge-collection information from standard internal quantum efficiency (IQE) spectra, without assuming ideal contacts or diffusion-dominated transport. By analyzing the limiting regimes of strong and weak light absorption, we linearize the IQE with respect to the absorption coefficient, enabling direct extraction of physically meaningful quantities: the collection efficiency at the illuminated interface fC(0) and the average collection efficiency across the bulk absorber ⟨fC⟩. We demonstrate the approach experimentally using perovskite devices with and without an electron-transport layer, resolving contact-selectivity limitations and quantifying JSC penalties. The reconstructed IQE spectrum closely matches experimental data, validating the methodology [3].

References:

[1] Ji, R., Zhang, Z., Hofstetter, Y.J. et al. Perovskite phase heterojunction solar cells. Nat. Energy 2022, 7, 1170–1179.

[2] Lim, J., Kober-Czerny, M., Lin, YH. et al. Long-range charge carrier mobility in metal halide perovskite thin-films and single crystals via transient photo-conductivity. Nat. Commun., 2022,13, 4201.

[3] K. Taretto, H. Heffner, J.R. Bautista-Quijano et al. Simple Detection of Imperfect Charge Extraction at Contacts – Application to Perovskite Solar Cells. Adv. Energy Mater. 2025, e04734

Acknowledgements:

This work was supported by the M-ERA.NET grant “PHANTASTIC” call 2021 [R.8003.22]. Y. V. and Y. D. acknowledge the Leibniz Collaborative Excellence funding program of the Leibniz Association “Towards Efficient and Stable Semi-transparent pERovskite photovoltaics by plAsmonic Enhancement” (TESSERAE). J. R. B.-Q. and Y.V. thank the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft for funding via the project TANGO.

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