A perovskite solar cell has a perovskite-structured compound, usually a hybrid organic-inorganic lead or tin halide-based material, used as a light-harvesting active layer. Other materials often used to manufacture solar perovskites include methylammonium, lead halides, and silicon.
In 2016, the development of efficient low-bandgap (1.2 - 1.3eV) perovskite materials and the fabrication of efficient devices based on these enabled a new concept: all-perovskite tandem solar cells, where two perovskite compounds with different bandgaps are stacked on top of each other.
Table 1 The best-performing perovskite-based tandem solar cells. The long-term stability of PSCs represents a key obstacle for their commercial deployment. Perovskite materials typically used in solar cells have been shown to be unstable when exposed to oxygen, water, heat, and light.
Cannavale, A. et al. Perovskite photovoltachromic cells for building integration. Energy Environ. Sci. 8, 1578–1584 (2015). (A combination of photovoltaic and electrochromic behaviours is reported in this work to enable adjustable solar windows.).
As such, research into perovskite recycling is crucial. One tricky component of perovskites to recycle is lead. Currently, producing 1 GW of energy using the most efficient perovskite solar cell would result in 3.5 tons of lead waste. The main strategy used right now to mitigate lead contamination is in-operation of the solar cell.
Currently, perovskite solar cells (PSCs) with notable performance are still based on the lead halide perovskites, though they are potentially toxic (Liu et al., 2017).
A perovskite solar cell (PSC) is a type of solar cell that includes a perovskite-structured compound, most commonly a hybrid organic–inorganic lead or tin halide-based material as the light-harvesting active layer. Perovskite materials, such as methylammonium lead halides and all-inorganic cesium lead halide, are cheap to produce and simple to manufacture.