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Low Temperatures Reduce Shallow Defect Energies and Interfacial Recombination Losses in Triple-Cation Lead-Halide Perovskites

Guus J. W. Aalbers1, Simon V. Quiroz Monnens1, S. Mihály Calis1, Willemijn H. M. Remmerswaal1, Martijn M. Wienk1, and René A. J. Janssen1,2,*

  • *Contact author: r.a.j.janssen@tue.nl
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PRX Energy 5, 033003 – Published 8 July, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/jzjm-xw3v

Abstract

Understanding the origin and mechanisms of defect-induced voltage losses and recombination in metal-halide perovskites aids in the development of new strategies to achieve higher solar cell efficiencies. Photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy provides insight into charge recombination at defects in the perovskite and at interfaces with passivation and electron transport layers. Measuring the time-resolved PL as a function of temperature for a triple-cation mixed-halide perovskite (CsFAMA) reveals that the PL decay is dominated by shallow defects and that lowering the temperature changes the trap-energy landscape, making the shallow defects shallower until they vanish into the conduction or valence bands at 90 K. Depositing fullerene (C60) on top of the CsFAMA perovskite induces significant nonradiative recombination losses at room temperature, which can largely be reduced by applying interfacial passivation. Interestingly, cooling to 90 K makes the charge-recombination dynamics almost identical for CsFAMA and CsFAMA/C60 films, irrespective of interfacial passivation treatments. At such low temperatures, nonradiative recombination losses become less dominant because interfacial recombination velocities are reduced. The results provide new insight into shallow defects and recombination losses in CsFAMA perovskites and help to better understand the effect of surface treatments on shallow-defect properties.

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Metal-halide perovskites are a new class of semiconductors for application in solar cells. Like any semiconductor, they contain structural defects that limit the solar cell efficiency by trapping and recombination of charges. By monitoring the light emitted from these perovskites as a function of time after a laser pulse, it is found that shallow traps dominate the undesired recombination. While one may expect that trapping and recombination increase at low temperature, experiments now show that the opposite happens. This is explained by the fact that the shallow defects are intrinsic to the perovskite and are formed in a thermally activated process. At low temperature the defects almost disappear from these perovskites, resulting in an improved semiconductor.

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PRX Energy 5, 033003– Published 8 July, 2026
  • Received 6 March 2026
  • Revised 9 June 2026
  • Accepted 12 June 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.

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