GIFT Associate Professor Chen Hao's Team Publishes in Advanced Materials: Upright Orientation of Asymmetric Conjugated SAMs Enables High-Performance Perovskite Solar Cells

A research team led by Associate Professor Chen Hao of the Global Institute of Future Technology (GIFT) at Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU), in collaboration with Professor Fan Jian's team at Soochow University, has published a paper titled “Upright Orientation of Asymmetric Conjugated SAM Enables High-Performance Perovskite Solar Cells” in Advanced Materials.

Gu Xinyu, a doctoral student, and Zhu Siyuan, a postdoctoral researcher in Chen's team, co-authored the paper as first authors. Associate Professor Chen Hao serves as the corresponding author, and GIFT is the first affiliated institution.

Self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) are promising hole-transport interlayers for inverted perovskite solar cells (PSCs) owing to their ultrathin thickness and tunable work function. However, conventional SAMs such as Me-4PACz tend to lie flat or tilt on substrates, leading to disordered dipole orientation, inadequate substrate coverage, and buried terminal groups that are unable to passivate interface defects.

To address these limitations, researchers designed an asymmetric conjugated SAM molecule, BCPA-Ph. Its vertically oriented π-conjugated backbones build direct hole-transport pathways, thereby accelerating carrier extraction. The fully exposed terminal carbazole N–H group forms intermolecular hydrogen bonds with perovskite surface iodine species, eliminating iodine-vacancy traps.

As a result, the inverted PSCs based on BCPA-Ph achieved a certified power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 27.21%, with significantly improved thermal and operational stability. Moreover, BCPA-Ph molecules show excellent universality for large-scale and wide-bandgap perovskite devices, yielding a PCE of 26.34% for 1 cm² devices, and 23.77% for 1.68 eV wide-bandgap PSCs. The work highlights the critical importance of molecular configuration engineering to SAMs design for high-performance PSCs.

Figure 1: Molecular configuration and anchoring of SAM molecules on FTO substrates.

Figure 2: Buried-interface interactions and regulation of perovskite crystallization.

Figure 3: Interfacial morphology and spatial distribution of carrier properties.

Figure 4: Interfacial residual stress, carrier dynamics, and recombination characteristics.

Figure 5: Photovoltaic performance and stability of perovskite solar cells.

Paper link:

X. Gu, S. Zhu, C. Su, et al. “Upright Orientation of Asymmetric Conjugated SAM Enables High-Performance Perovskite Solar Cells.” Advanced Materials (2026): e75147. https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.75147

Author profile

Gu Xinyu

2025 doctoral student in Chen Hao’s group at GIFT. His research focuses on the development and application of efficient, stable single-junction perovskite photovoltaic devices. He has published four papers as first author (including co-first author) in Advanced Materials (AM), Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS), Advanced Energy Materials (AEM), and Green Energy & Environment (GEE).

Zhu Siyuan

Postdoctoral researcher at GIFT (supervisor: Associate Professor Chen Hao). He received his PhD degree from Beijing Institute of Technology and Liaoning University (joint training). His research focuses on the development of efficient, stable single-junction perovskite solar cells and large-scale device applications. He has published 14 papers in journals including Adv. Mater., Energy Environ. Sci., and Adv. Funct. Mater., and holds one authorized Chinese invention patent.

Chen Hao

Tenure-track associate professor and doctoral supervisor at GIFT. He has been selected for the National High-Level Young Talent Program (Overseas), MIT Technology Review's "35 Innovators Under 35" Asia Pacific List, and SJTU Siyuan Young Scholar. His research has received support from the Shanghai Magnolia Talent Plan-Pujiang Project, the inaugural Qiyuan Young Scholar Program (2025), and the HE Science Foundation (2026). Prof. Chen received his Ph.D. degree in 2020 from a joint doctoral program between the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences and ShanghaiTech University under the supervision of Professor Zhijun Ning. From 2021 to 2024, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Toronto and Northwestern University under the supervision of Professor Edward H. Sargent. His research focuses on the development and application of efficient and stable single/multi-junction perovskite photovoltaic devices. He has set multiple world records and was the first to achieve certified efficiencies for inverted-structure perovskite photovoltaic devices. Prof. Chen has published multiple papers as the first author (including co-first author) or corresponding author in top journals such as Science (3), Nature (3), Nat. Photonics, Nat. Mater., Nat. Energy, Nat. Nanotechnol., Nat. Commun., JACS (2), Adv. Mater. (5). 18 papers are ESI highly cited, with over 9,900 citations. He currently serves as a young editorial board member for journals including Nano-Micro Letters, InfoMat, and eScience. He is also an independent reviewer for more than 30 journals, including Science, Nature Energy, Nature Photonics, JACS, and Advanced Materials.