Perovskite Solar Cells: A Review of the Recent Advances

Abstract

Perovskite solar cells (PSC) have been identified as a game-changer in the world of photovoltaics. This is owing to their rapid development in performance efficiency, increasing from 3.5% to 25.8% in a decade. Further advantages of PSCs include low fabrication costs and high tunability compared to conventional silicon-based solar cells. This paper reviews existing literature to discuss the structural and fundamental features of PSCs that have resulted in significant performance gains. Key electronic and optical properties include high electron mobility (800 cm2/Vs), long diffusion wavelength (>1 μm), and high absorption coefficient (105 cm−1). Synthesis methods of PSCs are considered, with solution-based manufacturing being the most cost-effective and common industrial method. Furthermore, this review identifies the issues impeding PSCs from large-scale commercialisation and the actions needed to resolve them. The main issue is stability as PSCs are particularly vulnerable to moisture, caused by the inherently weak bonds in the perovskite structure. Scalability of manufacturing is also a big issue as the spin-coating technique used for most laboratory-scale tests is not appropriate for large-scale production. This highlights the need for a transition to manufacturing techniques that are compatible with roll-to-roll processing to achieve high throughput. Finally, this review discusses future innovations, with the development of more environmentally friendly lead-free PSCs and high-efficiency multi-junction cells. Overall, this review provides a critical evaluation of the advances, opportunities and challenges of PSCs.

Improving the Performance of Lead‐Free FASnI3‐Based Perovskite Solar Cell with Nb2O5 as an Electron Transport Layer

“…[5,6] In the last few years, perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have been collecting massive consideration due to their low-cost and environmentally friendly fabrication process. [7][8][9] The PSC with efficiencies of 3.13% in CH 3 NH 3 PbBr 3 and 3.81% in CH 3 NH 3 PbI 3 has been first discovered by Kojima et al in 2009. [10] After the Kojima et al reports on the PSC, further studies on PSCs are conducted widely, and only after three years, a power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 9.7% is reported by Kim et al in a solid-state dyesensitized photovoltaic (PV) structure.…”

“…[ 5,6 ] In the last few years, perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have been collecting massive consideration due to their low‐cost and environmentally friendly fabrication process. [ 7–9 ]…”

Inherent internal p-n junction assisted single layered n-type iron pyrite solar cell

“…Moreover, the record efficiency of 26.7% of silicon solar cells [9,10] is very close to the Auger limit of 29.4% [11], and hence further improvement in power conversion efficiency is difficult. Therefore, researchers started exploring new materials like perovskite, an emerging material in this field [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19]. However, perovskite-based solar cells suffer from pinhole defects and have stability issues [20].…”

Formamidinium Lead Iodide Perovskite Thin Films Formed by Two-Step Sequential Method: Solvent–Morphology Relationship

“…Organic-inorganic perovskites have emerged as a highly promising class of semiconductor for optoelectronic device applications, such as solar cells [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 ], light-emitting diodes (LEDs) [ 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 ] and photodetectors [ 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 ] due to their many advantages including their low-cost, facile synthesis, solution processability, high absorption coefficient in the visible region, direct bandgap, ease of bandgap tuning and high luminescence quantum yield [ 16 ]. The power conversion efficiency (PCE) of perovskite solar cells was raised to 25.5% [ 7 ] and the external quantum efficiencies of LEDs based on perovskites exceeded 20% [ 11 ].…”