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The light and shade of perovskite solar cells

The rise of metal halide perovskites as light harvesters has stunned the photovoltaic community. As the efficiency race continues, questions on the control of the performance of perovskite solar cells and on its characterization are being addressed.

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Figure 1: Crystal structure of cubic metal halide perovskites with the generic chemical formula ABX3.
Figure 2: Schematic cross-section of a solid-state mesoscopic solar cell using N719 or CH3NH3PbI3 as a sensitizer.
Figure 3: Evolution from a mesoscopic to a planar embodiment of the perovskite solar cell.
Figure 4: Cross-sectional scanning electron microscopy picture of a mesoscopic perovskite solar cell prepared by the sequential deposition method.

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful to my co-workers at the Laboratory of Photonics and Interfaces at EPFL, and to all academic partners with whom I have cooperated in the field of perovskite solar cells, in particular N.-G. Park, (SKKU Korea), S. I. Seok (KRICT Korea), S. Mhaisalkar, N. Mathews and T. C. Sum (NTU Singapore), H. W. Han (HUST China) and H. Bolink (Univ. of Valencia Spain). Financial support by the Swiss National Science Foundation and the European Research Council through the Advanced Research Grant (ARC no. 247404) 'Mesolight' and the Global Research Laboratory (GRL) programme, funded by the National Research Foundation in Korea are specifically acknowledged.

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Grätzel, M. The light and shade of perovskite solar cells. Nature Mater 13, 838–842 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat4065

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