Highly Foldable Perovskite Solar Cells Using Embedded Polyimide/Silver Nanowires Conductive Substrates

Abstract

Foldable solar cells, with the advantages of size compactness and shape transformation, are attractive power sources for wearable and portable devices. The challenge for realizing highly foldable solar cells is to exploit highly foldable conductive substrates to replace brittle indium tin oxide. In this work, highly foldable and smooth polyimide (PI)/silver nanowires (AgNWs) conductive substrates are constructed by embedding AgNWs into ultrathin PI films to improve the interface binding force. As a result, the embedded PI/AgNWs complex shows a neglectable change in resistance after folding for 1000 cycles. The perovskite solar cells (PSCs) on PI/AgNWs substrates exhibit power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 11.8%. More importantly, beneficial from the highly foldable PI/AgNWs conductive substrates, the PSCs maintain 73.5% and 55.2% of the initial PCE after +180° and −180° folding for 1000 cycles, respectively, which is the first report on the foldable AgNWs‐based PSCs. In addition, the degradation mechanism of PSCs subjected to different folding conditions is tentatively exploited. This work paves the way toward realizing highly foldable PSCs for various practical applications.

Facile fabrication of large-scale silver nanowire transparent conductive films by screen printing

“…Therefore, metal nanowires are ideal materials to replace indium tin oxide (ITO) [10,11], carbon nanotubes [12], graphene [13,14] and conductive polymers [ [15] to fabricate TCFs. Among metal nanowires, silver nanowires (AgNW) is the most promising candidate owing to excellent conductivity, relatively low cost and convenient fabrication [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24].…”

Novel Ag‐Mesh Transparent Hybrid Electrodes for Highly Efficient and Mechanically Stable Flexible Perovskite Solar Cells

“…Indium tin oxide (ITO) electrodes, which are acknowledged to be widely used in PSCs, [10][11][12] have excellent optoelectronic properties but incompatible for plastic substrates when annealing at high temperatures (250 °C) as well as their intrinsic brittleness. Therefore, it is challenging to develop novel TCEs for highly efficient and mechanically stable FPSCs.Alternatively, TCEs based on conductive organic polymers, [13][14][15] carbon materials, [16][17][18] and metal structures [19][20][21][22][23][24] have been successfully demonstrated in flexible optoelectronic devices. Among those, metal-based TCEs, especially metal nanowires (NWs) or meshes, are the ideal candidates due to their good conductivity, optical transparency, and mechanical flexibility.…”

“…However, the major issue to the metal-based TCEs application in FPSCs is the degradation induced by the interdiffusion of metals and halide ions. [25,26] Attempts have been made to add a protective layer such as metal oxides, [24,27] conductive polymers, [22,23] and carbon materials [28] between the metal-based TCEs and the perovskite absorber layer. Lee et al deposited pinhole-free amorphous aluminum-doped zinc oxide (a-AZO) protective layers on the silver nanowires (AgNWs) network.…”

“…Alternatively, TCEs based on conductive organic polymers, [13][14][15] carbon materials, [16][17][18] and metal structures [19][20][21][22][23][24] have been successfully demonstrated in flexible optoelectronic devices. Among those, metal-based TCEs, especially metal nanowires (NWs) or meshes, are the ideal candidates due to their good conductivity, optical transparency, and mechanical flexibility.…”

Potassium Methacrylate Additive Strategy for Improved Stability of Ultrathin Copper‐Based Perovskite Solar Cells

“…[8][9][10] Therefore, the investigation on foldable PSCs is of great importance.As the integral part, a high-quality foldable transparent electrode is essential for the foldable PSCs. [11,12] At present, great efforts have been undertaken to search for foldable transparent electrodes as alternatives for conventional indium tin oxide (ITO) electrodes, such as carbon materials, [13,14] conductive polymers, [15,16] metal nanowires, [17,18] metal grides, [19,20] and ultrathin metals. [21][22][23][24] Among them, the ultrathin metal electrode with the dielectric layer/ultrathin metal/dielectric layer structure, exhibits the characteristics of high transparency, high conductivity, foldability, and large-area preparation, considering to be an appealing choice for foldable transparent electrodes.However, the undesirable reaction of metal and perovskite in PSCs based on metal-based transparent electrode, results in poor power conversion efficiency (PCE) and stability issue, limiting their wide application.…”