Perovskite Heterostructures by Vapour Deposition
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Oxford
Department Name: Oxford Physics
Abstract
There is currently a pressing global need to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, and at the same time satisfy the world's growing desire for cheap electricity. Solar cells, which directly convert the Sun's radiation into electricity, offer a realistic method of generating electricity sustainably, on a large scale and at costs similar to and even lower than more polluting conventional forms of power generation (coal, gas, nuclear). Over the past few years a new class of solar cells based on metal-halide perovskite semiconductors has emerged. Power conversion efficiencies for these materials have increased at an unprecedented rate for a new photovoltaics material and now exceed 20%. An intense worldwide research effort into these materials is now underway; however nearly all research is focussed on solution processed perovskites, and most highly efficient solar cells are small area devices not suited to large area deployment. In this project we will build on our early lead in the area of vapour deposited perovskites to develop highly efficient large area perovskite solar cells. Our evaporation technique offers superior film uniformity over large areas and is highly reproducible as compared with more common solution processing methods. Using the vapour deposition route we will develop all-perovskite tandem and multi-junction solar cells to further improve the efficiency for these remarkable devices. We utilise the recently funded EPSRC "National thin-film cluster facility for advanced functional materials" to adapt our advances in perovskite materials and device technologies to current industrial thin-film production methods.
Planned Impact
This project will advance methods for the vapour deposition of perovskite semiconductors, and realise efficient, cost-effective, large area, all-perovskite multilayer photovoltaic (PV) devices. It is our vision and motivation that over a 10 to 20 year time scale, the cost of electricity from PV will drop to less than a quarter the cost of producing electricity from coal. This has the potential to, and in our view will, deliver a zero-carbon future within a 30 year timeframe.
There is overwhelming evidence that our increasing consumption of fossil fuels and the associated emission of carbon dioxide is leading to climate change. This has brought new urgency to the development of clean, renewable sources of energy, and to reduction of our energy consumption by developing new low energy consumption devices to satisfy the growing demand. Photovoltaic devices that harvest the energy provided by the sun have great potential to contribute to the solution, but uptake of photovoltaic energy generation has been weakened by the cost of devices based on current technology. Although silicon PV continues to steadily drop in price, the key to creating a step reducing cost is the development of new photovoltaic materials either offering a step increase in efficiency or allowing easy, large-scale processing from solution or low-temperature evaporation, neither of which require costly purification and high-energy, slow deposition processes. Very high efficiency solar cells have been realised in group-III-V materials using tandem and multi-junction architectures, but at present the production costs of these devices are high, making them uneconomic for large-area deployment. The route we are undertaking here is to exploit recent advances made in solution-processed metal halide perovskite materials by transferring them to the industrially relevant technique of vapour deposition. The vapour deposition technique will not only allow the cost-effective production of highly uniform large area solar cells with high yield, but will also enable a step improvement in device efficiency by creating tandem and multi-junction solar cells.
The global PV market is currently close to $100bn pa. Although 90% of the market is presently met by c-Si and only 10% by thin-film, low cost thin-film approaches still look set to offer the lowest prices on a 10 to 50 year timescale, allowing solar energy to compete favourably on price with fossil fuels. Establishing all-perovskite tandem solar cells will boost the efficiency, while the vapour deposition method will enable large devices and close to 100% device yields, together delivering a premium product for the entire PV market. This could then access the majority of a $100bn market, and then further accelerate the growth of the PV market as a whole.
The vapour-deposition technology developed in the project will create uniform, large area solar cells with high efficiencies and device yields. This technology is compatible with infrastructure used in industry for large-area thin-film deposition, and thus the outcomes of the project could be immediately transferred to the UK manufacturing industry. This has the potential to put UK at the forefront of the expanding "green energy" economy both in terms of solar cell manufacturing and the growing business of large area terrestrial solar power generation. Beyond commercial, economic, environmental and societal impact, the activities within this project will aid in the training and education of both scientists and the general public. The training of PDRAs and PhD students in this industrially relevant area will create an employment pool for jobs in research, R&D, energy sectors and other economic areas, and carry the knowledge and skills they acquire into those fields. The project's outreach activities will engage and inform the public and inspire young minds to become our future generation technologists and leaders.
There is overwhelming evidence that our increasing consumption of fossil fuels and the associated emission of carbon dioxide is leading to climate change. This has brought new urgency to the development of clean, renewable sources of energy, and to reduction of our energy consumption by developing new low energy consumption devices to satisfy the growing demand. Photovoltaic devices that harvest the energy provided by the sun have great potential to contribute to the solution, but uptake of photovoltaic energy generation has been weakened by the cost of devices based on current technology. Although silicon PV continues to steadily drop in price, the key to creating a step reducing cost is the development of new photovoltaic materials either offering a step increase in efficiency or allowing easy, large-scale processing from solution or low-temperature evaporation, neither of which require costly purification and high-energy, slow deposition processes. Very high efficiency solar cells have been realised in group-III-V materials using tandem and multi-junction architectures, but at present the production costs of these devices are high, making them uneconomic for large-area deployment. The route we are undertaking here is to exploit recent advances made in solution-processed metal halide perovskite materials by transferring them to the industrially relevant technique of vapour deposition. The vapour deposition technique will not only allow the cost-effective production of highly uniform large area solar cells with high yield, but will also enable a step improvement in device efficiency by creating tandem and multi-junction solar cells.
The global PV market is currently close to $100bn pa. Although 90% of the market is presently met by c-Si and only 10% by thin-film, low cost thin-film approaches still look set to offer the lowest prices on a 10 to 50 year timescale, allowing solar energy to compete favourably on price with fossil fuels. Establishing all-perovskite tandem solar cells will boost the efficiency, while the vapour deposition method will enable large devices and close to 100% device yields, together delivering a premium product for the entire PV market. This could then access the majority of a $100bn market, and then further accelerate the growth of the PV market as a whole.
The vapour-deposition technology developed in the project will create uniform, large area solar cells with high efficiencies and device yields. This technology is compatible with infrastructure used in industry for large-area thin-film deposition, and thus the outcomes of the project could be immediately transferred to the UK manufacturing industry. This has the potential to put UK at the forefront of the expanding "green energy" economy both in terms of solar cell manufacturing and the growing business of large area terrestrial solar power generation. Beyond commercial, economic, environmental and societal impact, the activities within this project will aid in the training and education of both scientists and the general public. The training of PDRAs and PhD students in this industrially relevant area will create an employment pool for jobs in research, R&D, energy sectors and other economic areas, and carry the knowledge and skills they acquire into those fields. The project's outreach activities will engage and inform the public and inspire young minds to become our future generation technologists and leaders.
Publications
Ball J
(2019)
Dual-Source Coevaporation of Low-Bandgap FA 1- x Cs x Sn 1- y Pb y I 3 Perovskites for Photovoltaics
in ACS Energy Letters
Borchert J
(2019)
Impurity Tracking Enables Enhanced Control and Reproducibility of Hybrid Perovskite Vapor Deposition.
in ACS applied materials & interfaces
Borchert J
(2017)
Large-Area, Highly Uniform Evaporated Formamidinium Lead Triiodide Thin Films for Solar Cells
in ACS Energy Letters
Crothers TW
(2017)
Photon Reabsorption Masks Intrinsic Bimolecular Charge-Carrier Recombination in CH3NH3PbI3 Perovskite.
in Nano letters
Davies C
(2018)
Temperature-Dependent Refractive Index of Quartz at Terahertz Frequencies
in Journal of Infrared, Millimeter, and Terahertz Waves
Davies CL
(2018)
Bimolecular recombination in methylammonium lead triiodide perovskite is an inverse absorption process.
in Nature communications
Davies CL
(2018)
Impact of the Organic Cation on the Optoelectronic Properties of Formamidinium Lead Triiodide.
in The journal of physical chemistry letters
Duijnstee E
(2020)
Toward Understanding Space-Charge Limited Current Measurements on Metal Halide Perovskites
in ACS Energy Letters
Duijnstee E
(2021)
Understanding Dark Current-Voltage Characteristics in Metal-Halide Perovskite Single Crystals
in Physical Review Applied
Eggimann HJ
(2020)
Efficient energy transfer mitigates parasitic light absorption in molecular charge-extraction layers for perovskite solar cells.
in Nature communications
Klug M
(2020)
Metal composition influences optoelectronic quality in mixed-metal lead-tin triiodide perovskite solar absorbers
in Energy & Environmental Science
Knight A
(2018)
Electronic Traps and Phase Segregation in Lead Mixed-Halide Perovskite
in ACS Energy Letters
Knight AJ
(2021)
Halide Segregation in Mixed-Halide Perovskites: Influence of A-Site Cations.
in ACS energy letters
Le Corre VM
(2021)
Revealing Charge Carrier Mobility and Defect Densities in Metal Halide Perovskites via Space-Charge-Limited Current Measurements.
in ACS energy letters
Lim J
(2019)
Elucidating the long-range charge carrier mobility in metal halide perovskite thin films
in Energy & Environmental Science
Lim V
(2022)
Impact of Hole-Transport Layer and Interface Passivation on Halide Segregation in Mixed-Halide Perovskites
in Advanced Functional Materials
Lin Q
(2017)
Near-Infrared and Short-Wavelength Infrared Photodiodes Based on Dye-Perovskite Composites
in Advanced Functional Materials
Lin Q
(2018)
Hybrid Perovskites: Prospects for Concentrator Solar Cells.
in Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany)
Lin YH
(2019)
Deciphering photocarrier dynamics for tuneable high-performance perovskite-organic semiconductor heterojunction phototransistors.
in Nature communications
Lin YH
(2020)
A piperidinium salt stabilizes efficient metal-halide perovskite solar cells.
in Science (New York, N.Y.)
Lohmann KB
(2022)
Solvent-Free Method for Defect Reduction and Improved Performance of p-i-n Vapor-Deposited Perovskite Solar Cells.
in ACS energy letters
Lohmann KB
(2020)
Control over Crystal Size in Vapor Deposited Metal-Halide Perovskite Films.
in ACS energy letters
Mahesh S
(2020)
Revealing the origin of voltage loss in mixed-halide perovskite solar cells
in Energy & Environmental Science
McMeekin D
(2019)
Solution-Processed All-Perovskite Multi-junction Solar Cells
in Joule
McMeekin DP
(2017)
Crystallization Kinetics and Morphology Control of Formamidinium-Cesium Mixed-Cation Lead Mixed-Halide Perovskite via Tunability of the Colloidal Precursor Solution.
in Advanced materials (Deerfield Beach, Fla.)
Description | There is currently a pressing global need to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, and at the same time satisfy the world's growing desire for cheap electricity. Solar cells, which directly convert the Sun's radiation into electricity, offer a realistic method of generating electricity sustainably, on a large scale and at costs similar to and even lower than more polluting conventional forms of power generation (coal, gas, nuclear). Over the past few years a new class of solar cells based on metal-halide perovskite semiconductors has emerged. Power conversion efficiencies for these materials have increased at an unprecedented rate for a new photovoltaics material and now exceed 20%. An intense worldwide research effort into these materials is now underway; however nearly all research is focussed on solution processed perovskites. We have developed a "dry" (solvent free) method of depositing hight efficiency thin-film solar cells. Our vapour-deposition technique offers superior film uniformity over large areas and is highly reproducible. The high quality thin films of metal halide perovskites developed during this project have also enabled a serious of studies of the fundamental science of these remarkable semiconductors. |
Exploitation Route | Our results offer an industrially-scalable approach to the manufacture of high-efficiency thin-film solar cells. Our work has also lead to other research groups and companies worldwide using our approach. |
Sectors | Electronics Energy Manufacturing including Industrial Biotechology |
URL | https://www-thz.physics.ox.ac.uk/perovskites.html |
Description | Electron microscopy collaboration with Monash University |
Organisation | Monash University |
Country | Australia |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | Our vapour codeposition method has allow us to grow extremely thin metal halide perovskite films, which is enabling new scanning transmission electron microscopy studies. |
Collaborator Contribution | Monash Centre for Electron Microscopy have pioneered low-dose high resolution electron microscopy, and are gaining new insights into metal halide perovskite semiconductors with the aid of our ultrathin materials. |
Impact | Scientific outputs in progress. |
Start Year | 2020 |