New Films on Old Substrates: Toward Green and Sustainable Energy Production via Recycling of Functional Components from Degraded Perovskite Solar Cells

Abstract

The development of solution processable perovskite solar cells (PSCs) has progressed rapidly, and the their highest power conversion efficiency (PCE) has recently surpassed 22%. Further studies to promote market-oriented PSCs call for further reducing the manufacturing cost of the device and addressing the concerns about the possible outflow of toxic lead. To reduce the level of environmental pollution and prevent the health hazard caused by degraded devices (solid waste) and possible lead outflow and to conserve resources, we adopted low-temperature solution-processed, multirecycled glass/FTO/c-TiO2 (m-TiO2) substrates from the degraded devices to fabricate efficient planar heterojunction (PH) and mesoporous (M) PSCs in an environmentally friendly and energy-conserving manner. This is realized by simple and low-temperature processes, including organic solvent washing, ultrasonic cleaning, and UV–ozone treatment. After two rounds of substrate recycling, the PH PSC and M PSC still exhibited peak efficiencies of 11.87% and 11.03%, respectively, indicating the feasibility of recycling used substrates for sustainable, energy and resource conservation-oriented, and environmentally friendly energy production.