• Jasieniak, Jacek
• Gao, Mei
• Pai, Narendra
• Sutherland, Luke
• Simon, George
• Yan, Shiqin
• Rodriguez, Juan Benitez

Abstract

The high-throughput fabrication of perovskite solar cells (PSCs) cannot be realized until the costly, low-throughput evaporated metal electrode is replaced by roll-to-roll (R2R) printable and vacuum-free electrodes. We introduce a novel method to fabricate, and deposit printed carbon-based electrodes that avoids potential loss of PSC performance due to solvent migration from the pastes. Flexible, R2R-fabricated carbon-based PSCs (c-PSCs) with record power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) of up to 16.7% were produced by vacuum-free deposition of all active layers, apart from the transparent conductive electrode. This performance compares very favorably with that of control flexible PSCs comprising an evaporated gold electrode which displayed record PCEs of up to 17.4%. The flexible c-PSCs demonstrate outstanding mechanical stability, with retention of more than 90% of their initial PCE after 3000 cyclic bends. Furthermore, we have developed a means to deposit the fully printed electrodes onto rigid, glass-based c-PSCs to achieve efficiencies of over 20% for small area cells (0.16 cm2 active area), and over 18% for large area (~ 1 cm2). This readily scalable method provides a pathway forward to improve the production throughput and cost-effectiveness of PSC fabrication by removing the need for costly gold evaporation processes whilst still retaining exceptional photovoltaic performance and believe this method can be readily adopted to demonstrate record-breaking PSCs incorporating printed electrodes.

Topics

• Deposition
• perovskite
• impedance spectroscopy
• Carbon
• glass
• glass
• gold
• evaporation