This review article examines the current state of understanding in how metal halide perovskite solar cells can degrade when exposed to moisture, oxygen, heat, light, mechanical stress, and reverse bias. It also highlights strategies for improving stability, such as tuning the composition of the perovskite, introducing hydrophobic coatings, replacing metal electrodes with carbon or transparent conducting oxides, and packaging. The article concludes with recommendations on how accelerated testing should be performed to rapidly develop solar cells that are both extraordinarily efficient and stable.

Understanding Degradation Mechanisms and Improving Stability of Perovskite Photovoltaics.

A Review of Perovskites Solar Cell Stability

Organometal halide perovskite solar cells have demonstrated high conversion efficiency but poor long-term stability against ultraviolet irradiation and water. We show that rapid light-induced free-radical polymerization at ambient temperature produces multifunctional fluorinated photopolymer coatings that confer luminescent and easy-cleaning features on the front side of the devices, while concurrently forming a strongly hydrophobic barrier toward environmental moisture on the back contact side. The luminescent photopolymers re-emit ultraviolet light in the visible range, boosting perovskite solar cells efficiency to nearly 19% under standard illumination. Coated devices reproducibly retain their full functional performance during prolonged operation, even after a series of severe aging tests carried out for more than 6 months.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/early/2016/09/28/science.aah4046.full.pdf

Improving efficiency and stability of perovskite solar cells with photocurable fluoropolymers.

This review captures the synthesis, assembly, properties, and applications of copper chalcogenide NCs, which have achieved significant research interest in the last decade due to their compositional and structural versatility. The outstanding functional properties of these materials stems from the relationship between their band structure and defect concentration, including charge carrier concentration and electronic conductivity character, which consequently affects their optoelectronic, optical, and plasmonic properties. This, combined with several metastable crystal phases and stoichiometries and the low energy of formation of defects, makes the reproducible synthesis of these materials, with tunable parameters, remarkable. Further to this, the review captures the progress of the hierarchical assembly of these NCs, which bridges the link between their discrete and collective properties. Their ubiquitous application set has cross-cut energy conversion (photovoltaics, photocatalysis, thermoelectrics), en...

Compound Copper Chalcogenide Nanocrystals

Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) are regarded as prospective solar cells for the next generation of photovoltaic technologies and have become research hotspots in the PV field. The counter electrode, as a crucial component of DSSCs, collects electrons from the external circuit and catalyzes the redox reduction in the electrolyte, which has a significant influence on the photovoltaic performance, long-term stability and cost of the devices. Solar cells, dye-sensitized solar cells, as well as the structure, principle, preparation and characterization of counter electrodes are mentioned in the introduction section. The next six sections discuss the counter electrodes based on transparency and flexibility, metals and alloys, carbon materials, conductive polymers, transition metal compounds, and hybrids, respectively. The special features and performance, advantages and disadvantages, preparation, characterization, mechanisms, important events and development histories of various counter electrodes are presented. In the eighth section, the development of counter electrodes is summarized with an outlook. This article panoramically reviews the counter electrodes in DSSCs, which is of great significance for enhancing the development levels of DSSCs and other photoelectrochemical devices.

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Counter electrodes in dye-sensitized solar cells

In this study, a novel and facile passivation process for a perovskite solar cell is reported. Poor stability in ambient atmosphere, which is the most critical demerit of a perovskite solar cell, is overcome by a simple passivation process using a hydrophobic polymer layer. Teflon, the hydrophobic polymer, is deposited on the top of a perovskite solar cell by a spin-coating method. With the hydrophobic passivation, the perovskite solar cell shows negligible degradation after a 30 day storage in ambient atmosphere. Suppressed degradation of the perovskite film is proved in various ways: X-ray diffraction, light absorption spectrum, and quartz crystal microbalance. This simple but effective passivation process suggests new kind of approach to enhance stability of perovskite solar cells to moisture.

Enhancing Stability of Perovskite Solar Cells to Moisture by the Facile Hydrophobic Passivation

On the basis of the many advantages of quantum dots (QDs) including multiple exciton generation, high absorption coefficient, and band-gap energy controllability, quantum-dot-sensitized solar cells (QDSSCs) have been studied for a few decades. However, despite the many advantages, improvement in the power-conversion efficiencies of QDSSCs has been stagnated for a long time. To suggest a breakthrough in this stagnated QDSSC field, counter electrodes (CEs) have been focused on and are introduced in this Review article. Counter electrodes have been paid relatively less attention, whereas QDs and photoanode structures have been intensively studied. Nevertheless, it is an unchanged fact that CEs are also of considerable importance in QDSSCs, as they hold the possibility to enhance the performance of QDSSCs. In this Review, as an introduction, the basic working principles of QDSSCs are covered, and some widely used analytical tools for CEs are discussed, such as current density–voltage measurements, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, cyclic voltammetry, and Tafel polarization measurements. Then, some interesting representative work on CEs is introduced. Given that various types of CEs exist, categorization of the CEs was conducted as follows: noble metals, metal sulfides, carbon derivatives, conducting polymers, and combinations of these types. With this Review article, it is hoped that insight will be gained to achieve a breakthrough in the stagnant field of QDSSC research.

Counter Electrodes for Quantum-Dot-Sensitized Solar Cells

In this work, enhanced light stability of perovskite solar cell (PSC) achieved by the introduction of a core/shell-structured CdS/TiO2 electrode and the related mechanism are reported. By a simple solution-based process (SILAR), a uniform CdS shell was coated onto the surface of a TiO2 layer, suppressing the activation of intrinsic trap sites originating from the oxygen vacancies of the TiO2 layer. As a result, the proposed CdS-PSC exhibited highly improved light stability, maintaining nearly 80% of the initial efficiency after 12 h of full sunlight illumination. From the X-ray diffraction analyses, it is suggested that the degradation of the efficiency of PSC during illumination occurs regardless of the decomposition of the perovskite absorber. Considering the light-soaking profiles of the encapsulated cells and the OCVD characteristics, it is likely that the CdS shell had efficiently suppressed the undesirable electron kinetics, such as trapping at the surface defects of the TiO2 and preventing the resu...

Core/Shell Structured TiO2/CdS Electrode to Enhance the Light Stability of Perovskite Solar Cells.

Currently, the stability issue of the perovskite solar cells (PSCs) is one of the most critical obstacles in the commercialization of PSCs. Although incredible advances in the photovoltaic efficiencies of PSCs have been achieved in the past few years, research on the stability of PSCs has been relatively less explored. In this study, a new kind of CdS hole-blocking layer replacing the traditional compact TiO2 layer is developed to improve the photostability of PSCs because the intrinsic oxygen vacancies of the TiO2 surface are suspected to be the main cause for the photoinduced degradation of PSCs. As a result, PSCs with the CdS layer exhibit considerably improved photostability, maintaining over 90% of the initial efficiency after continuous sunlight illumination for 12 h, while the TiO2 PSC retains only 18% of the initial efficiency under the same conditions. Charge-transfer characteristics related to photodegradation are investigated by various analyses including electrochemical impedance spectroscopy ...

Novel CdS Hole-Blocking Layer for Photostable Perovskite Solar Cells

For stable quantum dot-sensitized solar cells, an oligomer-contained gel electrolyte was employed with a carbon-based counter electrode and a hierarchically shelled ZnO photoelectrode. Poly(ethylene glycol) dimethyl-ether (PEGDME) was added to the polysulfide electrolyte to enhance the stability of the methanol-based electrolyte. In addition, the nanocomposite gel electrolyte with fumed silica was used, which provided a solid three-dimensional network. A quantum-dot-modified ZnO nanowire photoanode enhanced the visible light harvesting, and a Pt/CNT-RGO counter electrode increased the catalytic activity. The oligomer gel electrolyte prevented the liquid electrolyte from leaking, and the carbon-based counter electrode retarded chemical poisoning at the counter electrode. The optimized cell exhibited 5.45% photoelectric conversion efficiency with long-term stability demonstrated over 5000 s operation time.

Insung Hwang

Papers

Enhancing Stability of Perovskite Solar Cells to Moisture by the Facile Hydrophobic Passivation

Counter Electrodes for Quantum-Dot-Sensitized Solar Cells

Core/Shell Structured TiO2/CdS Electrode to Enhance the Light Stability of Perovskite Solar Cells.

Novel CdS Hole-Blocking Layer for Photostable Perovskite Solar Cells

Highly durable and efficient quantum dot-sensitized solar cells based on oligomer gel electrolytes.