Abstract
High-throughput roll-to-roll (R2R) manufacturing of perovskite solar cells (PSCs) is currently limited by thermal processes that take tens of minutes each, translating to impractically long annealing tools at high web speeds. In addition, PSCs are usually made with metal oxide transport layer materials that require high temperatures for thermal annealing. Here, we demonstrate the fabrication of PSCs using photonic curing, instead of thermal annealing, to convert NiOx directly from sol-gel precursors for hole transport layers and to crystallize methylammonium lead iodide (MAPbI3) active layers on flexible Willow® Glass substrates. Photonic curing uses short, intense pulses of light to process materials at a high speed, hence it is compatible with R2R manufacturing. We achieved power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) of 11.7% in forward-scan and 10.9% in reverse-scan for PSCs made with photonic cured NiOx and MAPbI3 films. Furthermore, both NiOx and MAPbI3 films could be processed with a single photonic curing pulse, with a web speed of 5.7 m/min, and still produce PCEs comparable to thermally annealed control samples. Based on the single-pulse photonic curing condition for each film, we project a web speed of 26 m/min, laying a pathway to high-throughput production of perovskite solar modules.
Highlights
Halide perovskite solar cell (PSC) efficiencies have increased dramatically in the past decade, with power conversion efficiencies (PCE) exceeding 25% for single-junction devices (NREL, 2019)
We demonstrate photonic curing for both the NiOx hole transport layers (HTLs) and MAPbI3 active layer on the same device, i.e., a device without any thermal annealing step, and achieve performance comparable to a device with all layers processed by thermal annealing
Scheme 1 depicts the different combinations of thermal annealed (TA) or photonic cured (PC) processes to form NiOx HTLs and MAPbI3 active layers on Willow® Glass (WG)/indium tin oxide (ITO) substrates
Summary
Halide perovskite solar cell (PSC) efficiencies have increased dramatically in the past decade, with power conversion efficiencies (PCE) exceeding 25% for single-junction devices (NREL, 2019). Halide perovskites can be deposited with solution methods and processed at low temperatures, making them a good candidate for roll-to-roll (R2R) printing processes on flexible substrates (Li et al, 2018; Jena et al, 2019). With a 1.5 m wide web moving at a web speed of 30 m/min, R2R processing of PSC could provide up to 4 GW/year for a single R2R assembly line (EMC, 2020). Solution-deposition approaches, including printing (ink-jet, screen, gravure, flexography) and coating (blade, slotdie, spray) methods, have already been developed and can exceed 10 m/min, they are compatible with R2R manufacturing (Søndergaard et al, 2013; Abbel et al, 2018). Metal oxide electron transport layers (ETLs) and hole transport layers (HTLs) for PSCs typically require a high temperature (>100°C) annealing step to fully achieve the desired electronic properties.
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