Understanding the Interplay of Binary Organic Spacer in Ruddlesden–Popper Perovskites toward Efficient and Stable Solar Cells

Ruddlesden–Popper perovskite (RPP) materials have attracted great attention due to their superior stability, where the organic spacer dominantly determines the stability and efficiency of RPP solar cells, but research still lacks the systematical understanding of the interplay of binary spacer in the overall mixture range of 0–100% in RPPs on the precursor chemistry, film quality, and carrier behavior. Herein, a series of novel binary spacer RPP films of (PBA_{1− x}BA_x)₂MA₃Pb₄I₁₃ (BA = n-butylammonium, PBA = 4-phenylbutan-1-aminium, and MA = methylammonium) is successfully fabricated to reveal the interplay of binary spacers. The incorporation of 50% BA into the (PBA)₂MA₃Pb₄I₁₃ precursor solution increases the colloidal size and reduces nucleation sites, and therefore forms a very smooth film with much larger crystal grains and a higher degree of crystal preferential orientation, resulting in a significant reduction of trap states. The resulting combination of fast electron transfer and efficient electron extraction facilitates to effectively suppress the trap-assisted charge recombination and remarkably decrease charge recombination losses. Consequently, the (PBA_0.5BA_0.5)₂MA₃Pb₄I₁₃ device achieves a champion efficiency of 16.0%, among the highest reported efficiencies for RPP devices. Furthermore, this device demonstrates good ambient, illumination, and thermal stabilities, retaining 60–93% of its initial efficiency after 30 days of various ageing.