Lecture of the leading scientist Antonio Agresti on theme: “Bi-dimensional materials for interface engineering in perovskite photovoltaics”
Abstract.
Recently, the energy demand growth pushed the photovoltaic scientific community in exploiting new generation photovoltaic, promising to conjugate low production costs with high efficiency. Indeed, the emerging perovskite technology demonstrated power conversion efficiency (PCE) overcoming 25% by employing cheap solution-based manufacturing processes. The exceptional physical properties such as long charge diffusion length (till 1 µm), broad absorption spectrum in the visible range and bipolar charge transport make perovskite perovskite-based photovoltaics promising for next commercialization. However, the PSC life time is strongly affected by the operative conditions such as humidity, operating temperature and prolonged light soaking that activate irreversible degradation mechanisms in the bulk of organic/hybrid layers and at the device interfaces. Moreover, very few works reported about a feasible way to scale-up perovskite technology from lab-scale devices to large area modules, since the PCE falls suddenly down as soon as the active area dimension increases.
Recently, bi-dimensional (2D) materials demonstrated a pivotal role in ruling the perovskite solar cell (PSC) performance, long-term stability and scalability. In particular, their tunability in term of opto-electronic properties with proper chemical functionalizations and the possibility to be dispersed in several solvents, made 2D materials excellent candidate for designing efficient and stable PSC, tandem devices and large area modules. With this aim, bi-dimensional materials can be easily integrated in the PSC structure as inter or intra-layer by exploiting their exceptional physical and opto-electronic properties to tune energy level alignment, efficiently extract and collect charge at the electrode, enhance interface stability and help the device scalability by controlling the perovskite morphology over the 2D-materials modified charge transporting layer. In this work, the use of graphene and related materials (GRMs), transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) and 2D transition metal carbides, nitrides and carbonitrides (MXenes) in PSCs will be demonstrated to design efficient and stable perovskite devices on both small and large-scale dimensions.