Synthetic capsaicin improves perovskite solar cell efficiency

2022-12-01 18:16

　　Pepper is an important vegetable and spice crop, and its fruit contains a variety of bioactive compounds such as capsaicinoids, carotenoids, and oleoresins. Due to the increasing demand for environmentally friendly products, the bioactive compounds in pepper have attracted increasing attention. Synthetic capsaicinoids have potential applications in the pharmaceutical and cosmeceutical industries. Therefore, suitable varieties or F1 hybrids rich in bioactive compounds must be bred, which requires breeders to understand the available genetic resources, gene actions, and molecular markers associated with these traits.

　　The huge variability of bioactive compounds in synthetic capsaicinoid germplasm and next-generation sequencing technologies enable understanding, precise localization, and marker-assisted selection through single nucleotide polymorphism markers. This study reviews the current knowledge, genetic resources, and progress in marker development and breeding of synthetic capsaicinoids for industrial use worldwide.

　　Professor Bao Qinye's research group from the School of Physics and Electronic Science at East China Normal University introduced the natural molecule capsaicin as an additive into perovskite semiconductors, and combined photoelectron spectroscopy and optoelectronic devices to directly observe the surface of soft perovskite semiconductors.

　　Organic metal halide perovskite semiconductors have excellent photoelectric properties such as high light absorption coefficient, long carrier lifetime, long diffusion distance, high charge mobility, and adjustable band gap, and are widely used in photoelectric devices such as light-emitting diodes, photovoltaic devices, and detectors. Application prospects.

　　However, there is a large amount of non-radiative recombination energy loss inside perovskite photovoltaic devices, which restricts the improvement of their photoelectric conversion efficiency. A lot of work has confirmed that interface electronic structure matching plays a vital role in reducing device energy loss.

　　Bao Qinye said: "We hope to change the surface electronic structure of perovskite semiconductors through additives to achieve an interface electronic structure that matches the charge transport layer, thereby reducing the energy loss of the device."

　　"We have been looking to use green, sustainable forest-based bio-additive technology combined with lead-free perovskite semiconductors to ultimately achieve completely green perovskite electronic devices. Taking into account the electrical, chemical, optical and stability properties of the synthetic capsaicin compound, we initially believed that it could be a very effective additive and achieved good results," said Bao Qinye.

　　The researchers introduced the natural molecule synthetic capsaicin as an additive into the perovskite semiconductor, and used a self-designed and customized high-resolution, high-precision photoelectron spectroscopy in-situ analysis system to find that the surface electronic structure of the perovskite semiconductor had completely transitioned from the original p-type to the n-type, and Hall effect measurements further confirmed this new phenomenon.

　　The researchers found that this transition originated from a pn homojunction that spontaneously formed on the surface of the perovskite semiconductor, and confirmed that the homojunction structure was located about 100 nm below the film surface. The transition of the surface electronic structure of the perovskite semiconductor is more closely matched to the top electron transport layer (n-type), which is beneficial to interfacial charge transport and reduces non-radiative charge recombination losses at the interface.

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