Characteristics of Large Area Perovskite Solar Cells from Electrodes of Used Car Batteries

Abstract

Power conversion efficiency (PCE) of perovskite solar cells increases very rapidly and more than 22% is already achieved. However, some problems still need to be resolved for mass production and commercialization, including reducing production costs and development of large area solar cells. The best PCE is reached by very small active area, mostly below 0.5 cm2 which is mostly produced by spin-coating technique. Moreover, the perovskite precursor materials, mostly lead (II) iodide (PbI2) and hole-transport materials (HTM) Spiro-OMeTAD are expensive material in perovskite solar cells. Therefore, the use of low-cost perovskite precursors and low-cost HTM materials is one way to reduce the whole production costs of perovskite solar cells. Nowadays, many groups have been developed HTM-free perovskite solar cells using carbon-based mesoscopic solar cells for low cost production and large area perovskite solar cells, although the PCE of large area perovskite solar cells is still half than that very small area prepared by spin-coating technique. Here, we report our recent study to fabricate perovskite solar cells using mesoscopic carbon-based structure consisting of glass/ITO/TiO2/ZrO2/perovskite/carbon with active area larger than 1 cm2 by use of simple screen printing technique in ambient air with high humidity. We also synthesize PbI2 as perovskite precursor material from electrodes of used car battery to reduce the cost of solar cells production. Although, the PCE is still much lower than that reported by other groups, however, our study shows that perovskite solar cells from used car battery and with active area more than 1 cm2 can be fabricated in ambient air with high humidity by use of simple screen printing technique.