Upscaling of Perovskite Solar Cells: Fully Ambient Roll Processing of Flexible Perovskite Solar Cells with Printed Back Electrodes

TLDR

The study scales perovskite solar cells onto flexible substrates using ambient‑condition slot‑die roll coating to enable scalable manufacturing. Back electrodes printed with carbon or silver and device geometries (normal and inverted) are key to achieving the correct perovskite morphology, which is highly surface‑dependent. Morphology forms in 5–45 min, but fully scalable processing reduces performance by ~50 %, yielding 9.4 % PCE for spin‑coated ITO‑glass devices and 4.9 % for slot‑die coated flexible ITO‑PET devices.

Abstract

A scaling effort on perovskite solar cells is presented where the device manufacture is progressed onto fl exible substrates using scalable techniques such as slot-die roll coating under ambient conditions. The printing of the back electrode using both carbon and silver is essential to the scaling effort. Both normal and inverted device geometries are explored and it is found that the formation of the correct morphology for the perovskite layer depends heavily on the surface upon which it is coated and this has signifi cant implications for manufacture. The time it takes to form the desired layer morphology falls in the range of 5–45 min depending on the perovskite precursor, where the former timescale is compatible with mass production and the latter is best suited for laboratory work. A signifi cant loss in solar cell performance of around 50% is found when progressing to using a fully scalable fabrication process, which is comparable to what is observed for other printable solar cell technologies such as polymer solar cells. The power conversion effi ciency (PCE) for devices processed using spin coating on indium tin oxide (ITO)- glass with evaporated back electrode yields a PCE of 9.4%. The same device type and active area realized using slot-die coating on fl exible ITO-polyethyleneterphthalate (PET) with a printed back electrode gives a PCE of 4.9%.