Opportunities and Challenges for Perovskite Solar Cells Based on Vacuum Thermal Evaporation

Abstract

Developing an effective scalable fabrication process for perovskite solar cells is urgent to getting perovskite photovoltaic technology market‐ready. Perhaps due to the relatively cost‐effective setup and tunable fabrication processes, the vast majority of research efforts have been dedicated to the development of solution‐based scalable processes. Comparatively, the vacuum thermal evaporation processes have not been studied in‐depth, regardless of their advantages in reproducibility, scalability, extendable applications, safety, and toxicity. Here possible opportunities and challenges are discussed in utilizing the vacuum thermal evaporation technique for mass production of large‐area perovskite solar modules. While this process has technical and economical potential, more research should be warranted.

Sustainable and environmentally viable perovskite solar cells

“…Thermal evaporation processes can be used for deposition of the double perovskite, but such a process is costly and has issues related with controllability and reproducibility. 69…”

“…Another downside is that the double perovskites have low solubility in commonly used solvents. Thermal evaporation processes can be used for deposition of the double perovskite, but such a process is costly and has issues related with controllability and reproducibility 69 …”

Applications of vacuum vapor deposition for perovskite solar cells: A progress review

“…Compared with the multisource coevaporation, sequential evaporation avoids the risk of mutual interference by evaporating precursors separately or in different vacuum chambers, which can significantly improve the batch-to-batch reproducibility of the experiment. In addition, the evaporation rate of the metal halide and the ammonium salt can be monitored by the QCM, and thus, the film thickness of each precursor can be controlled much more precisely [31] . In recent years, PSCs fabricated by sequential evapo-ration exhibited a higher efficiency than multisource coevaporation (Figure 2a) [32] .…”

Solvent-free synthetic protocols for halide perovskites

“…6c), which results in non-reproducibility of perovskite film quality and device performance between batches and among different laboratories. 99…”

“…Recently, a 97-inch OLED display has been released, which supports the compatibility of thermal evaporation technology with large-area film and device fabrication. 99…”