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Conjugation-regulated self-assembled molecules for tandem solar cells

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Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Joint R&D Center of Suzhou National Laboratory, Kunshan GCL Optoelectronic Materials Co., Ltd. and Soochow University, and funding support from The Chinese University of HongKong (CHUK) through the Vice-chancellor Early Career Professorship Scheme. We would like to thank the Public Instrument Testing Center of the Energy College of Soochow University for providing the various tests.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2024YFB3817305), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (nos. 62474122, U24A2063, 62422512, 52603357), the Basic Research Program of Jiangsu Province (nos. BK20250046, BK20243031), the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program of Jiangsu Province (JSSCTD20250040), the Gusu Innovation and Entrepreneurship Leading Talent Program (ZXL2024389), the Suzhou Key Core Technologies Project (SYG2024146), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2025M783419), the National Funded Postdoctoral Research Program (GZC20252194), the Postdoctoral Excellence Program of Jiangsu Province (2025ZB555), the Special Project for the Integration of ‘Two Chains’ in Shaanxi Province (2023-LL-QY-16), the Natural Science Basic Research Program of Shaanxi (2026JC-YXQN-164) and Key Research and Development Program of Ningbo (2025Z232), the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR), China (project nos. PolyU 25300823, PolyU 15300724), the Scientific Research and Technology Development Project of China National Petroleum Corporation (grant no. 2024ZG50), the Youth Science and Technology Special Project of China National Petroleum Corporation (grant no. 2026DQ03039), the Research Grants Council (RGC) under the NSCF/RGC Joint Research Scheme (N_CUHK414/24), the Young Collaborative Research Fund (C4069-25YF), and the Research Impact Fund (R1001-24F). This research is further supported by project RNE-p4-25 of the Shun Hing Institute of Advanced Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Zheng Fang, Zhijie Rao, Chongtao Liu, Lei Ding, Anqi Lv

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Energy, Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Advanced Negative Carbon Technologies, Soochow University, Suzhou, China

    Zheng Fang, Zhijie Rao, Lei Ding, Qingshui Zheng, Huimin Zhang, Yue Yin, Luxin Lu, Hongbo Mo & Jiang Liu

  2. Institute of Functional Nano & Soft Materials (FUNSOM), Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Advanced Negative Carbon Technologies, Soochow University, Suzhou, China

    Zhijie Rao & Xiaohong Zhang

  3. State Key Laboratory of Flexible Electronics (LoFE) & School of Flexible Electronics (SoFE), Northwestern Polytechnical University (NPU), Xi’an, China

    Chongtao Liu & Kai Wang

  4. Department of Physics and Materials, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong SAR, China

    Anqi Lv & Jun Yin

  5. LONGi Central R&D Institute, LONGi Green Energy Technology Co. Ltd., Xi’an, China

    Yuan Qin, Fu Zhang, Yongcai He, Xixiang Xu & Bo He

  6. State Key Laboratory of Oil and Gas Equipment, CNPC Tubular Goods Research Institute, Xi’an, China

    Jingwei Xue & Long Jiang

  7. Center for Renewable Energy and Storage Technologies (CREST), King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

    Vladyslav Hnapovskyi, Fuzong Xu & Stefaan De Wolf

  8. Electronic Engineering Department, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China

    Tino Lukas, Zhaoyu Lou & Martin Stolterfoht

  9. Shun Hing Institute of Advanced Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China

    Tino Lukas & Martin Stolterfoht

  10. State Key Laboratory for Mechanical Behavior of Materials, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China

    Bo He

  11. Suzhou Laboratory, Suzhou, China

    Jiang Liu & Xiaohong Zhang

Authors

  1. Zheng Fang
  2. Zhijie Rao
  3. Chongtao Liu
  4. Lei Ding
  5. Anqi Lv
  6. Yuan Qin
  7. Jingwei Xue
  8. Vladyslav Hnapovskyi
  9. Fuzong Xu
  10. Tino Lukas
  11. Zhaoyu Lou
  12. Qingshui Zheng
  13. Huimin Zhang
  14. Yue Yin
  15. Luxin Lu
  16. Hongbo Mo
  17. Fu Zhang
  18. Yongcai He
  19. Xixiang Xu
  20. Martin Stolterfoht
  21. Stefaan De Wolf
  22. Long Jiang
  23. Bo He
  24. Jun Yin
  25. Kai Wang
  26. Jiang Liu
  27. Xiaohong Zhang

Contributions

Conceptualization: Z.F., Z.R., L.D., L.J. and J.L. Fabricated and optimized the perovskite/silicon tandem solar cells: Z.F., Z.R., L.D., Y.Q., Q.Z., H.Z., Y.Y., H.M., L.L., F.Z., J.X. and Y.H. Fabricated and optimized the silicon bottom cells: B.H., F.Z. and Y.H. Conducted the synthesis of SAM materials: K.W., J.X. and C.L. Conducted the DFT calculations: J.Y. and A.L. Conducted the XPS/UPS and C-AFM/KPFM measurements: Z.R., Q.Z. and Y.Y. Conducted the PL/TRPL/PLQY and PL mapping measurements: Z.R., L.D., J.X. and Y.Y. Conducted the hyperspectral imaging measurements: F.X., V.H. and S.D.W. Conducted the fast hysteresis and BACE measurements: T.L., Z.L. and M.S. Conducted the stability measurements: Z.R., L.D. and Q.Z. Funding acquisition: J.L., Z.F., B.H., X.Z., X.X. and L.J. Writing – original draft: J.L., Z.F. and Z.R. Writing – review and editing: J.L., Z.F., Z.R., L.D., K.W., J.X., L.J. and X.Z.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Long Jiang, Bo He, Jun Yin, Kai Wang, Jiang Liu or Xiaohong Zhang.

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Competing interests

Y.Q., F.Z., Y.H., X.X. and B.H. are employees of LONGi company. All other authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature thanks Luigi Angelo Castriotta and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Peer reviewer reports are available.

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Fang, Z., Rao, Z., Liu, C. et al. Conjugation-regulated self-assembled molecules for tandem solar cells. Nature (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-11226-8

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