Flexible perovskite solar cells based on green,continuous roll-to-roll printing technology

By designing and fabricating thin film electronic devices on a flexible substrate instead of more commonly used rigid substrate, flexible electronics produced has opened a field of special applications. In this article, we first reviewed available products that may be used as flexible substrates, their characteristics and unique advantages as supporting material for flexible electronic devices. Secondly, flexible perovskite solar cell is examined in detail, with special focus on its potential large-scale fabrication processes. In particular, a comprehensive review is provided on low cost solution printing techniques that is viewed highly as a viable tool for potential commercialization of the perovskite solar cells. Furthermore, a summary is given on green processing for the solution printing production of flexible perovskite devices.

Surfactant-assisted doctor-blading-printed FAPbBr3 films for efficient semitransparent perovskite solar cells

Organic-inorganic hybrid perovskite solar cells have generated wide interest due to the rapid development of their photovoltaic conversion effciencies.However,the majority of the reported devices have been fabricated via spin coating with a device areaof<1 cm2.In this study,we fabricated a wide-bandgap formamidi-nium lead bromide(FAPbBr3)film using a cost-effective,high-yielding doctor-blade-coating process.The effects of different surfactants,such as I-α-phosphatidylcholine,polyoxyethylene sorbitan monooleate,sodium lauryl sulfonate,and hexadecyl trimethyl ammonium bromide,were studied during the printing process.Accompanying the optimization of the blading temperature,crystal sizes of over 10μm and large-area perovskite films of5cm×5 cm were obtained using this method.The printed FAPbBr3 solar cells exhibited a short-circuit current density of 8.22 mA/cm2,an open-circuit voltage of 1.175 V,and an efficiency of 7.29%.Subsequently,we replaced the gold with silver nanowires as the top electrode to prepare a semitransparent perovskite solar cell with an average transmittance(400-800 nm)of 25.42%,achieving a high-power efficiency of 5.11%.This study demonstrates efficient doctor-blading printing for preparing large-area FAPbBr3 films that possess high potential for applications in building integrated photovoltaics.

Inverted polymer solar cells with employing of electrochemical-anodizing synthesized TiO_2 nanotubes

An inverted structure of polymer solar cells based on Poly（3-hexylthiophene）（P3HT）：[6-6] Phenyl-（6） butyric acid methyl ester （PCBM） with using thin films of TiO2 nanotubes and nanoparticles as an efficient cathode buffer layer is developed. A total of three cells employing TiO2 thin films with different thickness values are fabricated. Two cells use layers of TiO2 nanotubes prepared via self-organized electrochemical-anodizing leading to thickness values of 203 and 423.7 nm, while the other cell uses only a simple sol-gel synthesized TiO2 thin film of nanoparticles with a thickness of 100 nm as electron transport layer. Experimental results demonstrate that TiO2 nanotubes with these thickness values are inefficient as the power conversion efficiency of the cell using 100-nm TiO2 thin film is 1.55%, which is more than the best power conversion efficiency of other cells. This can be a result of the weakness of the electrochemical anodizing method to grow nanotubes with lower thickness values. In fact as the TiO2 nanotubes grow in length the series resistance （Rs） between the active polymer layer and electron transport layer increases, meanwhile the fill factor of cells falls dramatically which finally downgrades the power conversion efficiency of the cells as the fill factor falls.