Circular Economy Innovation for Advancing Metal Substrate Perovskite Solar Cells

Although viewed as green-technologies due to their ability to generate renewable solar energy, emerging photovoltaic technologies, including perovskites, have environmental impacts associated with their production and will contain hazardous components. Widespread deployment will require a continued supply of critical materials and full lifecycle optimisation is necessary at this early stage in development to make these technologies truly sustainable. The current linear design of renewable energy technologies contributes to inefficient production and disposal practices, necessitating urgent innovation towards a circular economy. This includes minimizing production-related environmental impacts, developing end-of-life strategies, ensuring design longevity, optimizing cradle-to-cradle processes, selecting low-impact materials, and substituting primary resources.

The project will focus on optimisation of end-of-life design for flexible metal-foil-based perovskite solar cells. This involves implementing processes like maintenance, refurbishment, remanufacturing, recycling, and transforming waste materials into manufacturing feedstocks. We will quantify the benefits of sustainability interventions, providing recommendations for sustainable materials, primary resource substitution, module designs, architectures, and processing methods. A priority list for materials recovery/substitution by employing resource availability mapping, lifecycle analysis, and sustainability indicators will be developed. Ultimately, the goal is to create eco-designed photovoltaic systems, enhancing the commercial viability and resource security of STRIPS technologies through the circular flow of materials.