Spherical hydroxyapatite nanoparticle scaffolds for reduced lead release from damaged perovskite solar cells

Abstract

Perovskite solar cells continue to attract interest due to their facile preparation and high power conversion efficiencies. However, the highest efficiency perovskite solar cells inevitably contain lead, which raises concerns over contamination of drinking water when a solar module is broken and then flooded. We previously showed that conventional synthetic hydroxyapatite (HAP) nanoparticles could capture some of the lead from broken solar cells, but the amount of lead released was well above the safe drinking water level. Here, we modify the HAP synthesis to prepare new spherical-HAP (s-HAP) nanoparticles with a 60% increase in the Pb absorption capacity. We blend s-HAPs with TiO2 nanoparticles to construct mixed scaffolds and investigate their effect on (FAPbI3)0.97(MAPbBr3)0.03 solar cell performance and lead capture. Replacement of 80% of the TiO2 nanoparticles with s-HAP causes the power conversion efficiency to increase from 18.61% to 20.32% as a result of decreased charge carrier recombination. Lead contamination of water from devices subjected to simulated hail damage followed by flooding is shown to decrease exponentially with increasing s-HAP content. The lead concentration in water after 24 h is below the US safe water drinking limit.

A novel natural scaffold layer improving efficiency, stability and reproducibility of Perovskite solar cells

“…They used montmorillonite as additive in perovskite layer around 0.01%wt and observed significant stability enhancement in PSCs. The third one is reported by Mokhtar et al 18 . They added spherical hydroxyapatite nanoparticles in TiO 2 scaffold layer to capture reduced lead release from damaged PSCs.…”

Electrophoretic Deposition of Chitosan–Hydroxyapatite Films and Their Electrochemical Behavior in Artificial Plasma

“…Once the CaO was obtained, the HAp was synthesized according to the procedure described by Muñoz-Sanchez et al [15] and Mokhtar et al [29] with some modifications. The starting reactants were CaO (obtained from the eggshell) and potassium dihydrogen phosphate (KH 2 PO 4 ), the amounts used of each of them were those corresponding to the stoichiometry of HAp (Ca/P molar ratio = 1.67).…”