Perovskite Photovoltaics in 2025: The certified frontier held while verification stayed scarce

@misc{aqoma2026perovskite,
  title = {{Perovskite Photovoltaics in 2025: The certified frontier held while verification stayed scarce}},
  author = {Havid Aqoma},
  howpublished = {ChemRxiv},
  year = {2026},
  month = sep,
  doi = {10.26434/chemrxiv.15009595/v1},
  url = {https://chemrxiv.org/doi/full/10.26434/chemrxiv.15009595/v1},
  note = {CC BY-NC-ND},
}

TY  - UNPB
TI  - Perovskite Photovoltaics in 2025: The certified frontier held while verification stayed scarce
AU  - Havid Aqoma
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/09/29
PB  - ChemRxiv
DO  - 10.26434/chemrxiv.15009595/v1
UR  - https://chemrxiv.org/doi/full/10.26434/chemrxiv.15009595/v1
AB  - This review assembles the complete 12-month publication record retrospectively, rather than through sequential monthly monitoring. The corpus holds 7931 publications meeting the topical scope criteria, of which 450 were examined in close detail across date-resolved monthly cohorts, alongside 1089 publications dated only to the calendar year. Within this literature, only 66 investigations reported an independently certified power conversion efficiency (PCE), which peaked at 33.15% for the year. Certified values moved from 30.26% in the first month recording a verified metric to 30.1% in the last, a net displacement of-0.16. Buried contact modification with carbazole self-assembled monolayers (SAMs), low-dimensional capping heterostructures, and additive-directed crystallization drove the performance records in both monolithic tandem and single-junction architectures. Mechanistic consensus breaks down over whether these surface modifiers permanently eliminate deep electronic traps or merely impose transient electrostatic potential shifts. Several groups attribute suppressed non-radiative recombination and stabilized open-circuit voltage (Voc) to chemical defect healing, while competing investigations demonstrate that asymmetric interfacial dipoles create electrostatic crosstalk, transport barriers, and unshielded internal fields that accelerate halide segregation. Carrying these interfacial treatments to scalable modules incurs a severe area penalty, with sharp efficiency deficits as aperture dimensions expand toward the maximum reported area of 764 cm2. In blade and slot-die deposition, the molecular attributes that minimize interface recombination in spin-coated cells directly impair meniscus translation, because hydrophobic self-assembled monolayer (SAM) terminal groups form precursor micellar aggregates that induce solvent dewetting, pinhole formation, and lateral nucleation gradients across wide substrates. Operational stability data remain deficient across the publication record. Merely 15 studies documented operational lifetimes, the longest reaching 3200 h, and only 24 articles followed standardized International Summit on Organic Photovoltaic Stability (ISOS) procedures. Most stability assessments evaluated unencapsulated storage in inert atmospheres, or omitted continuous maximum power point tracking (MPPT) under elevated operating temperatures, which leaves lifetime projections uncalibrated against operational degradation modes. Abstract-level reporting frequencies confirm the same verification gap: statements of independent certification occurred in just 5.8% of evaluated abstracts across the year, varying between 3.4% and 7.6% across monthly cohorts. Champion efficiency claims therefore rest predominantly on unverified, small-area laboratory cells that remain susceptible to spectral mismatch and calibration artifacts. Read across device architectures, the high open-circuit voltages obtained through contact engineering are frequently purchased with accelerated chemical and electronic degradation. Phosphonic acid anchor groups corrode reactive nickel oxide hole-transport layers under operating bias, and low-dimensional perovskite capping overlayers introduce anisotropic out-of-plane transport barriers that accumulate photogenerated carriers, lowering the kinetic activation barrier for electricfield-driven halide migration and phase demixing. In narrow-bandgap tin-lead absorbers, evidence settling whether stannous oxidation stems from autonomous chemical redox reactions or from downstream lattice microstrain remains thin, since chemical reducing agents delay degradation without resolving the underlying mechanical distortion. Establishing whether passivating molecules permanently eliminate deep recombination centers, or merely raise temporary barriers that disguise latent operational instabilities, requires synchronized operando spectroscopic and impedance measurements under simultaneous electrical bias and thermal stress.
ER  -