Perovskite Solar Cells toward Eco-Friendly Printing

Xiaoming Chang; Yuanyuan Fan; Kui Zhao; Junjie Fang; Dongle Liu; Ming-Chun Tang; Dounya Barrit; Detlef-M Smilgies; Ruipeng Li; Jing Lu; Jianbo Li; Tinghuan Yang; Aram Amassian; Zicheng Ding; Yonghua Chen; Shengzhong Frank Liu; Wei Huang

doi:10.34133/2021/9671892

Perovskite Solar Cells toward Eco-Friendly Printing

Research (Wash D C). 2021 Feb 16:2021:9671892. doi: 10.34133/2021/9671892. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Xiaoming Chang¹, Yuanyuan Fan¹, Kui Zhao¹, Junjie Fang¹, Dongle Liu¹, Ming-Chun Tang², Dounya Barrit², Detlef-M Smilgies³, Ruipeng Li⁴, Jing Lu¹, Jianbo Li¹, Tinghuan Yang¹, Aram Amassian^{2

5}, Zicheng Ding¹, Yonghua Chen⁶, Shengzhong Frank Liu^{1

7}, Wei Huang⁸

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Applied Surface and Colloid Chemistry, Ministry of Education, Shaanxi Key Laboratory for Advanced Energy Devices, Shaanxi Engineering Lab for Advanced Energy Technology, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi'an 710119, China.
² King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), KAUST Solar Center (KSC) and Physical Science and Engineering Division (PSE), Thuwal 23955-6900, Saudi Arabia.
³ Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14850, USA.
⁴ NSLS II, Brookhaven National Lab, Upton New York 11973, USA.
⁵ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and Carbon and Organic Electronics Laboratories (ORaCEL), North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695, USA.
⁶ Key Laboratory of Flexible Electronics (KLOFE) & Institute of Advanced Materials (IAM), Nanjing Tech University (NanjingTech), Nanjing, 211800 Jiangsu, China.
⁷ Dalian National Laboratory for Clean Energy, iChEM, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dalian 116023, China.
⁸ Frontiers Science Center for Flexible Electronics, Shaanxi Institute of Flexible Electronics (SIFE) and Xi'an Institute of Biomedical Materials & Engineering, Northwestern Polytechnical University (NPU), 127 West Youyi Road, Xi'an, 710072 Shaanxi, China.

Abstract

Eco-friendly printing is important for mass manufacturing of thin-film photovoltaic (PV) devices to preserve human safety and the environment and to reduce energy consumption and capital expense. However, it is challenging for perovskite PVs due to the lack of eco-friendly solvents for ambient fast printing. In this study, we demonstrate for the first time an eco-friendly printing concept for high-performance perovskite solar cells. Both the perovskite and charge transport layers were fabricated from eco-friendly solvents via scalable fast blade coating under ambient conditions. The perovskite dynamic crystallization during blade coating investigated using in situ grazing incidence wide-angle X-ray scattering (GIWAXS) reveals a long sol-gel window prior to phase transformation and a strong interaction between the precursors and the eco-friendly solvents. The insights enable the achievement of high quality coatings for both the perovskite and charge transport layers by controlling film formation during scalable coating. The excellent optoelectronic properties of these coatings translate to a power conversion efficiency of 18.26% for eco-friendly printed solar cells, which is on par with the conventional devices fabricated via spin coating from toxic solvents under inert atmosphere. The eco-friendly printing paradigm presented in this work paves the way for future green and high-throughput fabrication on an industrial scale for perovskite PVs.