Perovskite Solar Cells: Advancements, Properties, And Challenges

Complete a literature review for semitransparent perovskite-based solar cells. The literature review is not just a summary of everything you have read. It is a selection and analysis of existing researc which is relevant to your topic, and usually is the first step in starting work on a new research topic. The review should b written and presented in a professional style. IEEE Xplore (URL: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/home.jsp) is a good resource. Please use other high quality/tier lournals also. The review should contain:

I. A clear description how semitransparent perovskite-based solar cell works.

II. Recent trends and future prospects.

III. Give your opinion on the most important research done on these types of solar cells.

IV. Provide an executive summary for the literature review.

V. Quality of the references.

Arrangement of Perovskite Solar Cells

In semiconductor perovskite, the layers of the perovskite solar cells are arranged in different ways. In some of the applications, the perovskite cells are arranged in similar way as DSSC (dye sensitized solar cells) (Castro-Hermosa et al. 2017). In some of the perovskite products, the cells of pervoskite are arranged in similar way as in DSSC (dye sensitized solar cell) and instead of using dye anchored on semiconductor surface, perovskite material is used for absorbing light. In any kind of solar cell, the holes and electrons are to be separated and are then transported to external circuit so that they can produce electricity. In comparison to DSSCs, solar cells of perovskite that do not have thick layer of TiO₂ porus, so that the electron hole pairs for separation (Lan, Jiang and Li 2017). This is because the charges that are generated in the perovskite structure moves away very easily from each other. For the transportation of holes away from organic modules of perovskite is known as hole transport material that are used typically in the materials of perovskite. The hole transport materials are then deposited on thin film, on the top of perovskite to make the cell to come in a solid state and also avoids the need for the liquid electrolyte that is used in DSSCs that has the risk of having a leakage.

The solar cells that are mainly based on organometal trihalide perovskite are very light absorber which recently have emerged as most promising class of photovoltaic device (Zhou et al. 2016). The devices that are based on perovskite solar cells have low fabrication cost and have high performances if the solar cells are semitransparent and also is used as a solar window. The perovskite solar cells are highly efficient with very high transparency in visible spectrum that has been developed (Duong et al. 2016). There are dielectric-metal-dielectric with multilayered top electrode that has high conductivity and transparency optimized in continuous and thin film of methylammonium lead iodide. By combining the processing and development in device architecture, solar cells that are semitransparent perovskite with very high transmittance and also has the capacity to record the efficiency of power conversion that are prepared which has the thickness of perovskite with less than 55nm.

The material of perovskite comes from crystallography because they that the capability to incorporate easily to other thin films architectures known as standard OPV (Liu et al. 2017).  When there is best perovskite structure in the vacuum, there are implementation of more uniform qualities. For executing the best structure of perovskite, vaccum has been deposited so that there is a better and uniform quality of films. To obtain such perovsite structure, co-evaporation of organic component like methylammonium and the co-evaporation of the inorganic components like lead halide are required. There is a need of special chambers of evaporation for processing the accurate co-evaporation of the materials so that the perovskite material is formed (Hasan et al. 2017). These chambers are not usually available with the researchers. So, the perovskite material is difficult to make and the practical issues that arise from calibration and the cross-contamination in between organic and the non-organic sources that are impossible to clean. For developing a low-temperature solution deposits routes which offers simpler method so that the perovskites can be incorporated and are also used for materials sets that are existing. From the DSSC (Dye Sensitized Solar Cells) research, the perovskite solar cells came originally. Oxide scaffold is not usually required because the field of perovskite is already spreading out (Bush et al. 2016). Many of the architectures look same as thin-film photovltaics except the substituted active layers with perovskite. The key enables to ensure the materials of perovskite precursor that uses polar solvents for the purpose of deposition. Therefore, for having different layers, systems having orthogonal solvent are easily developed.

Light Absorbing Capacity of Perovskite Solar Cells

There is another structure that represents standard solar cell of perovskite that is base on the ITO substrates or standard glass with a contact of metal back (Lee et al. 2017). The devices that are formed from perovskite mostly have two interface layers of charge selective separately for holes and electrons respectively.  Many standard layers of interface from organic photovoltaics work very well. The hole interface works well with PEDOT: PSS and PTAA polymer class. PCBM, ZNO, TiO₂ and C₆₀ makes the electron interface effective (Sun et al. 2015). The field is very much new and there are many new archive of interface materials that are possible to explore. The energy levels and the interaction levels of many materials have to be optimized and understand which is a very interesting area in the research field.

The most important issue for device fabrication of perovskite solar cells practically are quality of the film and also the thickness of the film. The layers of the light harvest perovskite should be thick enough for more than several hundred thick in nanometer, and the thickness should also be greater than the organic photovoltaics. Until the optimization of the annealing temperature and the decomposition condition, there will be formation of rough surface along with incomplete coverage (Rizzo et al. 2017). Even if there is good optimization, a roughness on the surface remains. The layers of thick interface are also required for good optimization. About 11 % of the efficiency are achieved by devices that are spin coated.

The recent improvements regarding the device processing also have led significant increase in surface coverage, which generally reduces the roughness of the surface. For improvement of surface coverage as well as roughness, a very small quantity of acid is used such as hydroiodic, hydrochloric, and hydrobromic. The materials that are formed are generally the byproducts of synthesis of the product methylammonium halides. The solubility of lead are generally impacted because of the acid that are present in the material (Lan et al. 2018). The precipitation of salts are also considered another process of precise control. This process is mostly done by method of solvent quenching along with precise timing. There are further researches and improvements being made in all the areas, which include processing of perovskite in greater way.

The most important research on semitransparent perovskite based on solar cells is “Semitransparent, Easily Tunable Vivid Colorful Perovskite Solar Cells Featuring Ag/ITO/Ag Microcavity Structures” (Chen, Yu and Lu 2016). In this research paper, a semitransparent perovskite solar cell is developed with colors varying from reddish orange to bluish green. This arises mainly from the optical interface in microcavity system that mainly depends on thickness of indium tin oxide (ITO) and optical spencers. This paper describes preparation of perovskite materials with very simple preparation by having a process of solution coating and also the perovskite materials have very high performance. The submodules in PSC also has high performance with the use of slot-die roll coating under some ambient condition. The paper also shows schematic representation of the semitransparent pervovskite based solar cells and the corresponding structures which includes perovskite of lead halide. The below diagram show the details of the perovskite material and the A, B, and X that are mentioned in the diagram are CH₃NH₃⁺ and Pb²⁺ as well as halide.

Deposition of Perovskite Solar Cells

The solar cells that are based on Perovskite have bought a new key element for photovoltaic community with a certified efficiency of 20.1 % after every six years in the phase of development. There is a high band gap for active material, perovskite cells that has ideal candidate top cell in tandem configuration along with silicon bottom cell. There are several studies that shows potential tandem cells so that the efficiency can be exceeded. To increase the efficiency, light management and light minimization is to be done.

References

Bush, K.A., Bailie, C.D., Chen, Y., Bowring, A.R., Wang, W., Ma, W., Leijtens, T., Moghadam, F. and McGehee, M.D. (2016). Thermal and environmental stability of semi?transparent perovskite solar cells for tandems enabled by a solution?processed nanoparticle buffer layer and sputtered ITO electrode. Advanced Materials, 28(20), pp.3937-3943.

Castro-Hermosa, S., Dagar, J., Marsella, A. and Brown, T. (2017). Perovskite solar cells on paper and the role of substrates and electrodes on performance. [ebook] IEEE. Available at: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8000396/authors [Accessed 14 Feb. 2018].

Chen, C.P., Yu, Y.L. and Lu, J.H. (2016), June. Semitransparent, easily tunable vivid colorful perovskite solar cells featuring Ag/ITO/Ag microcavity structures. In Photovoltaic Specialists Conference (PVSC), 2016 IEEE 43rd(pp. 0751-0755). IEEE.

Duong, T., Lal, N., Grant, D., Jacobs, D., Zheng, P., Rahman, S., Shen, H., Stocks, M., Blakers, A., Weber, K. and White, T.P. (2016). Semitransparent perovskite solar cell with sputtered front and rear electrodes for a four-terminal tandem. IEEE Journal of Photovoltaics, 6(3), pp.679-687.

Hasan, M., Habib, M., Matin, M. and Amin, N. (2017). Modeling of High Efficient Perovskite-Si Tandem Solar Cell. [ebook] Available at: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8275213/ [Accessed 16 Feb. 2018].

Lan, F., Jiang, M. and Li, G. (2017). The characterization of defects states and charge injection barriers in perovskite solar cells. [ebook] IEEE International Conference on Nanotechnology. Available at: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8117404/authors [Accessed 16 Feb. 2018].

Lan, F., Jiang, M., Tao, Q. and Li, G. (2018). Revealing the Working Mechanisms of Planar Perovskite Solar Cells With Cross-Sectional Surface Potential Profiling. IEEE Journal of Photovoltaics, 8(1), pp.125-131.

Lee, H., Tyagi, P., Rhee, S., Park, M., Song, J., Kim, J. and Lee, C. (2017). Analysis of Photovoltaic Properties of a Perovskite Solar Cell: Impact of Recombination, Space Charge, Exciton, and Disorder. IEEE Journal of Photovoltaics, 7(6), pp.1681-1686.

Liu, Y., Ma, Y., Shin, I., Oh, C., Jeong, J., Taek Lim, K. and Park, S. (2017). Effective methods for improving device performances of P-I-N perovskite solar cells. [ebook] Korea: IEEE. Available at: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8114977/authors [Accessed 12 Feb. 2018].

Rizzo, A., Ortolan, L., Murrone, S., Torto, L., Barbato, M., Wrachien, N., Cester, A., Matteocci, F. and Di Carlo, A. (2017, April). Effects of thermal stress on hybrid perovskite solar cells with different encapsulation techniques. In Reliability Physics Symposium (IRPS), 2017 IEEE International (pp. PV-1). IEEE.

Sun, X., Asadpour, R., Nie, W., Mohite, A.D. and Alam, M.A. (2015). A physics-based analytical model for perovskite solar cells. IEEE Journal of Photovoltaics, 5(5), pp.1389-1394.

Zhou, F., Zhao, Y., Shen, X., Chai, Y. and Ma, Q. (2016, May). Multifunctional perovskite photovoltachromic supercapacitor. In Nanoelectronics Conference (INEC), 2016 IEEE International (pp. 1-2). IEEE.