Functional materials, device architecture, and flexibility of perovskite solar cell

Abstract

Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) are an emerging photovoltaic technology that promises to offer facile and efficient solar power generation to meet future energy needs. PSCs have received considerable attention in recent years, have attained power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) over 22%, and are a promising candidate to potentially replace the current photovoltaic technology. The emergence of PSCs has revolutionized photovoltaic research and development because of their high efficiencies, inherent flexibility, the diversity of materials/synthetic methods that can be employed to manufacture them, and the various possible device architectures. Further optimization of material compositions and device architectures will help further improve efficiency and device stability. Moreover, the search for new functional materials will allow for mitigation of the existing limitations of PSCs. This review covers the recently developed advanced techniques and research trends related to this emerging photovoltaic technology, with a focus on the diversity of functional materials used for the various layers of PSC devices, novel PSC architectures, methods that increase overall cell efficiency, and substrates that allow for enhanced device flexibility.

Opal-Like Photonic Structuring of Perovskite Solar Cells Using a Genetic Algorithm Approach

“…Parasitic absorption (in for example) is always included in our calculations, and therefore the obtained results should be considered as an upper maximal value. It is interesting to note that the optimized thickness for the HT layer outputted by the GA optimization is close to the value present in the literature ( = 240 nm instead of 250 nm [40][41]).…”

“…A uniform hole blocking layer made of TiO 2 is placed above the photo-active hybrid perovskite layer. Its thickness is fixed to 40 nm according to optimized results from the literature [33,[40][41][42]. Both refractive indices of the FTO and TiO 2 layers are taken from [42].…”

Efficiency enhancement of perovskite solar cells based on opal-like photonic crystals

“…The complex refractive indices from Spiro-OMeTAD and gold are taken from [43] and [44] respectively. One should note that the thicknesses of blocking TiO 2 , Spiro-OMeTAD and gold layers correspond to optimal thicknesses evidenced in literature [42,45]. The different layers described above constitute the unit cell (UC) of the PSC.…”

Structure-induced optoelectronic properties of phenothiazine-based materials

“…59,60 The typical PSC structure includes a lightabsorbing layer sandwiched between an electron-transport layer (ETL) and a hole-transport layer (HTL), which have the task of extracting the charges generated in the perovskite and guide them to the contacts. 61 A good transport layer should possess photochemical and thermal stability, high hole mobility, appropriate energy levels, and possibly an easy and cheap synthesis procedure. 8 Many materials have been tested to fulfill these requirements at best, especially among the HTLs.…”