Advancements and Prospects in Perovskite Solar Cells: From Hybrid to All-Inorganic Materials.

Hybrid perovskites, materials composed of metals and organic substances in their structure, have emerged as potential materials for the new generation of photovoltaic cells due to a unique combination of optical, excitonic and electrical properties. Inspired by sensitization techniques on TiO2 substrates (DSSC), CH3NH3PbBr3 and CH3NH3PbI3 perovskites were studied as a light-absorbing layer as well as an electron-hole pair generator. Photovoltaic cells based on per-ovskites have electron and hole transport layers (ETL and HTL, respectively), separated by an ac-tive layer composed of perovskite itself. Major advances subsequently came in the preparation methods of these devices and the development of different architectures, which resulted in an efficiency exceeding 23% in less than 10 years. Problems with stability are the main barrier to the large-scale production of hybrid perovskites. Partially or fully inorganic perovskites appear promising to circumvent the instability problem, among which the black perovskite phase CsPbI3 (α-CsPbI3) can be highlighted. In more advanced studies, a partial or total substitution of Pb by Ge, Sn, Sb, Bi, Cu or Ti is proposed to mitigate potential toxicity problems and maintain device efficiency.

Renewable aromatics through catalytic flash pyrolysis of pineapple crown leaves using HZSM-5 synthesized with RHA and diatomite.

The influence of reactor temperature of 300  and 600 °C and the acidity of the ZSM-5 and HZSM-5 catalysts on the pyrolysis product yields of the pineapple crown leaves have been investigated in a fixed bed reactor Py-GC/MS. The ZSM-5 catalyst was hydrothermally synthesized with a Si/Al ratio 50, using residual diatomite and rice husk ash as alternative sources of Al and Si for catalyst cost reduction. For the HZSM-5 synthesis, calcined ZSM-5 was activated by ion exchange between Na+ and H+. The catalysts structure was confirmed by the XRD and Rietveld treatment, SEM, FTIR, FRX, TGA and BET results. Analytical pyrolysis of the biomass was carried out at 500 °C in a Py-5200 HP-R pyrolyzer connected to the GC/MS and the pyrolysis vapors were transported to a catalytic bed at 300 and 600 °C. The results showed that the increase in the catalytic bed temperature promoted increased the aromatic content. The main pyrolysis products of the PCL were oxygenated compounds that were converted at 600 °C using the HZSM-5 catalyst into high value renewable aromatic compounds for the chemical industry, such as benzene, toluene, xylene, etilbenzene, thereby confirming the deoxygenation activity of synthesized catalyst to produce renewable aromatics compounds which are important platform chemicals and precursors for jet fuels, gases, polymers and solvents.