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High-throughput analysis of the ideality factor to evaluate the outdoor performance of perovskite solar minimodules

Nature Energy volume 6, pages 54–62 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Halide perovskite solar cells exhibit a unique combination of properties, including ion migration, low non-radiative recombination and low performance dependence on temperature. Because of these idiosyncrasies, it is debatable whether standard procedures for assessing photovoltaic technologies are sufficient to appropriately evaluate this technology. Here, we show a low dependence of the open-circuit voltage on the temperature of a MAPbI3 minimodule that allows a high-throughput outdoor analysis based on the ideality factor (nID). Accordingly, three representative power loss tendencies obtained from I–V curves measured with standard procedures are compared with their corresponding nID patterns under outdoor conditions. Therefore, based on the linear relationship between T80 and the time to reach nID = 2 (TnID2), we demonstrate that nID analysis could offer important complementary information with important implications for outdoor development of this technology, providing physical insights into the recombination mechanism dominating performance, thus improving the understanding of degradation processes and device characterization.

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Fig. 1: Configuration and outdoor placement of MAPbI3 minimodules.
Fig. 2: Normalized outdoor performance of three representative PSC samples during the first 100 hours of exposure.
Fig. 3: Patterns of degradation in the maximum power and the ideality factor.
Fig. 4: Ideality factor under indoor conditions.
Fig. 5: Relationship between T80 and nID.

Data availability

All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the published article and its Supplementary Information. All experimental data collected in the outdoor test and used in this work have been gathered in an open data repository at the University of Antioquia and are available at the following web site http://elektra.udea.edu.co/solarudea/. To reproduce the results of this work, weather data and data extracted from the I–V curves were processed in accordance with the flowchart shown in Supplementary Fig. 3. Guidelines on how to use these data are reported in Supplementary Notes 1 and 2.

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Acknowledgements

E.V. thanks Colombia’s Administrative Department of Science, Technology and Innovation (COLCIENCIAS) for national doctoral scholarship number 727-2015 (contract no. FP44842-124-2017). We gratefully acknowledge the financial support provided by the Colombia Scientific Program within the framework of the call Ecosistema Científico (contract no. FP44842—218-2018) and by the European Research Council (ERC) via a Consolidator grant (no. 724424—No-LIMIT).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centro de Investigación, Innovación y Desarrollo de Materiales—CIDEMAT, Universidad de Antioquia, Medellín, Colombia

    Esteban Velilla & Franklin Jaramillo

  2. Institute of Advanced Materials (INAM), Jaume I University, Castelló de la Plana, Spain

    Esteban Velilla & Iván Mora-Seró

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  1. Esteban Velilla
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Contributions

E.V. fabricated, installed, monitored and characterized the minimodules under indoor and outdoor conditions, and processed and analysed the data. F.J. directed the device fabrication and data collection. I.M.-S. designed and directed the data analysis. All authors participated in the discussion and interpretation of the results, and the preparation of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Franklin Jaramillo or Iván Mora-Seró.

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Supplementary Figs. 1–17, Notes 1 and 2 and Tables 1–5.

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Velilla, E., Jaramillo, F. & Mora-Seró, I. High-throughput analysis of the ideality factor to evaluate the outdoor performance of perovskite solar minimodules. Nat Energy 6, 54–62 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-020-00747-9

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