Strain regulation retards natural operation decay of perovskite solar cells.

Perovskite solar cells (pero-SCs) have undergone rapid development in the past decade. However, there is still a lack of systematic studies investigating whether the empirical rules of working lifetime assessment used for silicon solar cells can be applied to pero-SCs. It is believed that pero-SCs show enhanced stability under day/night cycling owing to the reported self-healing effect in the dark. Here we find that the degradation of highly efficient FAPbI pero-SCs is much faster under a natural day/night cycling mode, bringing into question the widely accepted approach to estimate the operational lifetime of pero-SCs based on continuous-mode testing. We reveal the key factor to be the lattice strain caused by thermal expansion and shrinking of the perovskite during operation, an effect that gradually relaxes under the continuous-illumination mode but cycles synchronously under the cycling mode. The periodic lattice strain under the cycling mode results in deep trap accumulation and chemical degradation during operation, decreasing the ion-migration potential and hence the device lifetime. We introduce phenylselenenyl chloride to regulate the perovskite lattice strain during day/night cycling, achieving a certified efficiency of 26.3 per cent and a 10-fold improvement in the time required to reach 80% of peak efficiency (T) under the cycling mode after the modification.