Over the past 15 years, solar cells incorporating lead halide perovskite photoactive layers have developed rapidly, achieving power-conversion efficiencies comparable to those of crystalline silicon. Much of this promise stems from their unique, weakly bound ionic ABX3 structure, which enables solution processing or thermal evaporation and allows properties to be tuned via A-site cation or X-site halide substitution. The most pressing challenge facing perovskite solar cells today is their limited stability, arising primarily from reactions between mobile ions and adjacent layers, as well as from the thermodynamic phase instability of certain perovskite formulations. As with many semiconductors, passivating surface defects is critical for extending charge lifetimes and improving electronic properties. In perovskites, however, effective passivation also enhances stability by raising energy barriers for ion generation, impeding ion migration, and suppressing the nucleation of undesirable phases. Among the most widely used and effective passivation materials are so-called 2D perovskites, composed of alternating layers of corner-sharing lead halide (PbX3) octahedra and cationic spacer ligands. In this talk, I will explore the formation and structural dynamics of these materials atop 3D perovskites and show how 2D/3D interfaces can be leveraged to achieve highly stable perovskite solar cells under harsh accelerated aging conditions.
Bio
Dr. Quinn Burlingame is Academic Research Manager at Princeton University, where he co-leads a research group with Prof. Lynn Loo. He received his B.S. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Penn State University in 2011 and 2013, conducting research on polymer dielectrics and ferroelectric materials in Prof. Qiming Zhang’s group. He earned his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan in 2018, where he studied organic solar cells in Prof. Stephen Forrest’s lab. In 2019, he joined Prof. Loo’s group at Princeton as an Arnold O. Beckman Postdoctoral Fellow in Chemical Sciences and was promoted to a leadership role in 2022 when Prof. Loo took on a concurrent position as CEO of the Global Center for Maritime Decarbonization in Singapore.
Dr. Burlingame’s research focuses on the photophysics, structure, and stability of “soft” perovskite and organic semiconductors, and their application to solar cells. He has authored more than 30 peer-reviewed publications, serves as Executive Director of the DOE-funded Center for Co-Design of Durable, Reproducible, and Efficient Perovskite Tandems (ADDEPT), and works as a Photovoltaic Technology Consultant for Rayleigh Solar Tech in Halifax, Canada.