EPFL-led group makes use of additives to improve the stability and also efficiency of perovskite solar cells

• A team of scientists, led by Professor Michael Grätzel at EPFL and also Xiong Li at the Michael Grätzel Center for Mesoscopic Solar Cells in Wuhan (China), have actually developed a technique that deals with stability issues of perovskite solar cells (PSCs) as well as raises their effectiveness.

The researchers introduced a phosphonic acid-functionalized fullerene derivative right into the charge-transporting layer of the PSC as a "grain boundary modulator", which helps strengthen the perovskite crystal structure as well as boosts the PSC's resistance to environmental stressors like heat as well as moisture.

The team likewise created a redox-active extreme polymer called poly(oxoammonium salt) that properly "p-dopes" the hole-transporting material-- an important component of the PSCs. The polymer, serving as a "p-dopant," improves the conductivity and also stability of the hole-transporting product, a crucial component of the cells. The procedure of "p-doping" entails introducing mobile fee electronic cost providers into the product to improve its conductivity and stability, as well as in this situation reduced the diffusion of lithium ions, a significant problem that adds to the functional instability of PSCs.

With the new technique, the researchers attained power conversion performances of 23.5% for tiny PSCs and 21.4% for bigger "minimodules." These effectiveness approach conventional solar cells, with the included advantage of an improved stability for PSCs.

The solar cells maintained 95.5% of their preliminary effectiveness after more than 3200 hours of continual exposure to simulated sunshine preserving the temperature level at 75 ° C over the entire duration, a substantial improvement over previous PSC designs.

The new technique can change using PSCs, making them easily accessible for use on a bigger scale. The researchers think that their technique could be easily scaled up for commercial production as well as might potentially be used to create secure, high-efficiency PSC modules.