Genetic Manipulation of M13 Bacteriophage for Enhancing the Efficiency of Virus-Inoculated Perovskite Solar Cells with a Certified Efficiency of 22.3%

Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) are considered to be one of the most promising solar energy harvesters owing to their high power conversion efficiency (PCE). To increase their PCE even further, additives are used; however, some of these additives pose certain disadvantages, which limit their applications to PSCs. Therefore, in this study, the nature-inspired ecofriendly M13 bacteriophage is genetically engineered to maximize its performance as a perovskite crystal growth template and as a passivator for PSCs. The genetic manipulation of the M13 bacteriophage enhances the Lewis coordination between the perovskite materials and single-stranded virus by amplifying a designated amino acid group. Among the 20 types of amino acids, lysine (Lys or K), arginine (Arg or R), and methionine (Aug or M) exhibit the strongest interaction with the perovskite materials. Results suggest that the K-amplified genetically engineered M13 bacteriophage is the most effective. The K-type M13 virus-inoculated PSCs yield a PCE of 23.6% in the laboratory. This device, when taken to a national laboratory for verification, exhibits a certified forward and reverse bias-combined efficiency (22.3%), which, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, is one of the highest efficiencies reported among the biomaterial-based PSCs.