Manufacturing planar perovskite solar cells in dusty environments

Abstract

Production of silicon solar cells necessitates cleanrooms to prevent dust contamination, which can lead to defects and reduced performance. This poses challenges for scaling up manufacturing and improving accessibility for device manufacture in less developed economies as cleanrooms represent an expensive and energy intensive investment, and so it is key that the next generation of solar technology differentiates from this. Perovskite has the potential to be far more robust and resilient to defects caused by dust particles, which then impacts on the capital cost of the equipment required for manufacture. This study evaluates the effects of non-conductive dust on planar perovskite devices, testing two different device structures with efficiencies exceeding 16%, testing an active area of 0.09 cm2. The setup simulated dust settling during the manufacturing process, expecting compromised performance in contaminated devices. Results revealed that devices with dust performed similarly to clean ones, with only limited losses in some performance metrics. High tolerance to contamination suggests that perovskite technology may remain operational under less controlled environments. These findings point toward a more accessible fabrication route reducing dependence on expensive cleanroom conditions typically required for silicon-based technologies.