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Towards stable and commercially available perovskite solar cells

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Abstract

Solar cells employing a halide perovskite with an organic cation now show power conversion efficiency of up to 22%. However, these cells are facing issues towards commercialization, such as the need to achieve long-term stability and the development of a manufacturing method for the reproducible fabrication of high-performance devices. Here, we propose a strategy to obtain stable and commercially viable perovskite solar cells. A reproducible manufacturing method is suggested, as well as routes to manage grain boundaries and interfacial charge transport. Electroluminescence is regarded as a metric to gauge theoretical efficiency. We highlight how optimizing the design of device architectures is important not only for achieving high efficiency but also for hysteresis-free and stable performance. We argue that reliable device characterization is needed to ensure the advance of this technology towards practical applications. We believe that perovskite-based devices can be competitive with silicon solar modules, and discuss issues related to the safe management of toxic material.

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Figure 1: Perovskite films obtained with different synthesis methods.
Figure 2: Photocarrier generation and collection.
Figure 3: Carrier extraction and recombination in perovskite materials.
Figure 4: Asymptotic IV characterization curves.
Figure 5: Amount of lead contained in a perovskite PV module and in natural soil.

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Acknowledgements

N.-G.P. acknowledges financial supports from the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grants funded by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (MSIP) of Korea under contracts No. NRF-2012M3A6A7054861 (Global Frontier R&D Program on Center for Multiscale Energy System), NRF-2015M1A2A2053004 (Climate Change Management Program), and NRF-2012M3A7B4049986 (Nano Material Technology Development Program). T.M. thanks Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) Advanced Low Carbon Technology R&D Program (ALCA) and NEDO research projects. The NREL portion of this work was supported by the US Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC36-08-GO28308 with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. K.Z. acknowledges support by the hybrid perovskite solar cell program by the US Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Solar Energy Technologies Office. M.G. acknowledges financial support from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), the NRP 70 ‘Energy Turnaround’ as well as from SNF-NanoTera and Swiss Federal Office of Energy (SYNERGY). He thanks the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) for financial support under a joint research project. He also thanks G. Rothenberger for his help with the kinetic analysis and the drawings presented in Fig. 2. M.G. acknowledges his affiliation as a visiting faculty member with Nanyang Technical University (NTU) Singapore and Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU) Seoul Korea.

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Park, NG., Grätzel, M., Miyasaka, T. et al. Towards stable and commercially available perovskite solar cells. Nat Energy 1, 16152 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nenergy.2016.152

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