Researchers fabricate high-performance, large-area perovskite submodules for solar cells

• Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) are appealing solar innovations. Although affordable wet handling has actually shown advantages in small-area PSC fabrication, the prep work of uniform cost transportation layers with thickness of several nanometers from solution for meter-sized large location items is still challenging.

Lately, a research group led by Prof. Liu Shengzhong from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has created an accomplished surface area redox design (SRE) strategy for vacuum-deposited NiOx to match the slot-die-coated perovskite, as well as fabricated high-performance large-area perovskite submodules.

This work was published in Joule on July 21.

Upside down PSCs are potentially more valuable than their typical equivalents due to the fact that the former have quickly mitigated hysteresis actions and also long-lasting durability. NiOx has been shown as the hole transport products for upside down PSCs. But for a lot of vacuum-processed NiOx films, the relatively hydrophobic surface attenuates the bond of perovskite ink, making it testing to deposit large-area perovskite films.

Additionally, the surface chemistry of NiOx is rather complicated as a large number of high-oxidative-state Ni species as well as chemically responsive hydroxyls can decompose perovskites, leading to a user interface energy obstacle and also noncapacitive hysteresis.

The SRE strategy not only removes the regional de-wetting trouble of perovskite ink, therefore accomplishing uniform polycrystalline perovskite films at the decimeter level, but also presents enhanced performance in digital residential properties, stability, mechanical attachment at the buried user interface through modulating the NiOx surface area features.

In this research, the scientists attained high-performance PSCs with stability of thousands of hrs under various worried problems as well as superior photovoltaic efficiency. The power conversion effectiveness of PSCs were 23.4% and also 21.3% for rigid and also flexible devices, respectively.

Additionally, as a result of the scalability of SRE technique to large-area configurations, they assembled perovskite submodules of area 156 × 156 mm2 with an amazing efficiency of 18.6% together with negligible hysteresis and also excellent stability.

"The SRE method gives a proof of concept for combining vacuum-fabricated fee transportation layers with wet-processed perovskites and promotes the stacking design of large-scale, uniform slim films for the advancement of efficient as well as stable perovskite modules," said Prof. Liu.