A Transparent Conductive Adhesive Laminate Electrode for High-Efficiency Organic-Inorganic Lead Halide Perovskite Solar Cells

摘要

A key challenge that can unlock the potential of third generation photovoltaics (PV) is the development of low cost indium free flexible transparent electrodes to enable lightweight, transparent and metal mounted devices. Here we describe a major breakthrough which allows a highly conducting self-adhesive laminate electrode to be applied to devices at room temperature which could be applied to scale up flexible lightweight PV applications. The development of solid state organic-inorganic metal halide perovskite solar cells (PSCs) with over 15% efficiency at lab-scale devices is extraordinarily exciting for third generation PV technology since it offers efficiency values comparable to conventional and commercial PV. Key to PSCs not merely being a lab curiosity is solving certain manufacturing processes required to scale these lab devices into modules. Typically laboratory charge collection at the counter electrode is achieved via evaporation of an opaque gold metallic contact onto the active material. Whilst being a very effective ohmic contact, it limits the potential for commercial manufacture given the expense and opacity of the gold which would prevent the application of perovskites for transparent or metal mounted applications. In this work we have developed a novel semi-transparent electrode design combining a polymer embedded nickel grid with a transparent conducting contact adhesive that can be applied to perovskite based devices providing conductivity, charge extraction, mechanical adhesion and protection. This has allowed indium-tin oxide (ITO), Au and Ag free entirely non-vacuum processed PSC devices to be fabricated with a solar-to-electrical power conversion efficiency (PCE) of over 15%.