100 °C Thermal Stability of Printable Perovskite Solar Cells Using Porous Carbon Counter Electrodes.

Many efforts have been made towards improving perovskite (PVK) solar cell stability, but their thermal stability, particularly at 85 °C (IEC 61646 climate chamber tests), remains a challenge. Outdoors, the installed solar cell temperature can reach up to 85 °C, especially in desert regions, providing sufficient motivation to study the effect of temperature stress at or above this temperature (e.g., 100 °C) to confirm the commercial viability of PVK solar cells for industrial companies. In this work, a three-layer printable HTM-free CH3 NH3 PbI3 PVK solar cell with a mesoporous carbon back contact and UV-curable sealant was fabricated and tested for thermal stability over 1500 h at 100 °C. Interestingly, the position of the UV-curing glue was found to drastically affect the device stability. The side-sealed cells show high PCE stability and represent a large step toward commercialization of next generation organic-inorganic lead halide PVK solar cells.

Light stability tests of CH3NH3PbI3 perovskite solar cells using porous carbon counter electrodes.

The CH3NH3PbI3 perovskite solar cells have been fabricated using three-porous-layered electrodes as, 〈glass/F-doped tin oxide (FTO)/dense TiO2/porous TiO2-perovskite/porous ZrO2-perovskite/porous carbon-perovskite〉 for light stability tests. Without encapsulation in air, the CH3NH3PbI3 perovskite solar cells maintained 80% of photoenergy conversion efficiency from the initial value up to 100 h under light irradiation (AM 1.5, 100 mW cm-2). Considering the color variation of the CH3NH3PbI3 perovskite layer, the significant improvement of light stability is due to the moisture-blocking effect of the porous carbon back electrodes. The strong interaction between carbon and CH3NH3PbI3 perovskite was proposed by the measurements of X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction of the porous carbon-perovskite layers.