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Top 10 most influential scientists in Perocskite Solar Cells
Top 10 most influential scientists in Perovskite Solar Cells
● Tsutomu Miyasaka, Toin University of Yokohama
Miyasaka’s long term experience and research has been focused on the design of low-temperature solution-printing process for fabrication of dye-sensitized solar cells and solid-state hybrid photovoltaic cells. Also, he developed photovoltaic cells using organo-lead halide compounds as light-absorbing materials---perovskite solar cells. Miyasaka has contributed to the pioneering works and discovered perovskite’s potential as low-cost, large-area high-efficiency thin film solar cells. His first paper on perovskite solar cells published in 2009 has been cited more than 4400 times. Now Miyasaka group has been endeavoring in practical applications of perovskite solar cells and dye-sensitized solar cells, plus these technologies to flexible devices and photodetectors.
● Nam-Gyu Park, Sungkyunkwan University
Nam-Gyu’s research has been focused on high efficiency dye-sensitized solar cells. He is specialist in design and synthesis of inorganic nanostructured materials as well as perovskite solar cells.
● Henry J. Snaith, University of Oxford
Snaith has made several significant advances for solution-processed solar cells, including the first demonstration of gyroid structured titania for dye solar cells. In 2012, Snaith has discovered the remarkable PV properties of metal halide perovskite which has emerged as a new field in PV research.
Snaith teamed up with Miyasaka, used spiro-OMeTAD as the hole-conducting layer, and deposited it on a mixed halide perovskite, CH3NH3Pbl2Cl. When the team made solar cells with those compounds and TiO2, they observed conversion efficiencies near 7.6 %, a value that just a year earlier would have turned heads. But when they replaced TiO2 with alumina (Al2O3), an insulator that cannot conduct electrons to the electrode---that is, when they made a solar cell that was sure to fail---it surprisingly delivered near 11 % conversion efficiency. The team proposed that alumina serves only as a high-surface-area scaffold but that it mediates formation of a layer of high-quality perovskite crystals. Snaith group suggested that the quality of the film is likely the reason the crystals can collect and transport electrons so efficiently. (Science 2012, DOI: 10.1126/science.1228604)
● Michael Grätzel, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, EPFL
- 2013, Grätzel published a research paper ”Sequential deposition as a route to high-performance perovskite-sensitized solar cells.” (Nature volume499, pages316–319 (18 July 2013))
Following pioneering work, solution-processable organic–inorganic hybrid perovskites—such as CH3NH3PbX3 (X = Cl, Br, I)—have attracted attention as light-harvesting materials for mesoscopic solar cells. So far, the perovskite pigment has been deposited in a single step onto mesoporous metal oxide films using a mixture of PbX2 and CH3NH3X in a common solvent. However, the uncontrolled precipitation of the perovskite produces large morphological variations, resulting in a wide spread of photovoltaic performance in the resulting devices, which hampers the prospects for practical applications. Here we describe a sequential deposition method for the formation of the perovskite pigment within the porous metal oxide film. PbI2 is first introduced from solution into a nanoporous titanium dioxide film and subsequently transformed into the perovskite by exposing it to a solution of CH3NH3I. We find that the conversion occurs within the nanoporous host as soon as the two components come into contact, permitting much better control over the perovskite morphology than is possible with the previously employed route. Using this technique for the fabrication of solid-state mesoscopic solar cells greatly increases the reproducibility of their performance and allows us to achieve a power conversion efficiency of approximately 15 % (measured under standard AM1.5G test conditions on solar zenith angle, solar light intensity and cell temperature). This two-step method should provide new opportunities for the fabrication of solution-processed photovoltaic cells with unprecedented power conversion efficiencies and high stability equal to or even greater than those of today’s best thin-film photovoltaic devices.
- 2017, Grätzel published a research paper “ Perovskite solar cells with CuSCN hole extraction layers yield stabilized efficiencies greater than 20%”. (Science 28 Sep 2017:eaam5655; DOI: 10.1126/science.aam5655)
Perovskite solar cells (PSC) with efficiencies >20% have only been realized with highly expensive organic hole-transporting materials. We demonstrate PSCs achieving stabilized efficiencies exceeding 20% with CuSCN as hole extraction layer using fast solvent removal method to create compact, highly conformal CuSCN layers that facilitate fast carrier extraction and collection. The PSCs showed high thermal stability under long term heating, however, their operational stability was poor. This instability originates from potential induced degradation of the CuSCN/Au contact. The addition of a conductive reduced graphene oxide spacer layer between CuSCN and gold allowed PSCs to retain >95% of their initial efficiency after aging at a maximum power point for 1000 hours at 60 Celsius. Importantly, under both continuous full-sun illumination and thermal stress, CuSCN based devices surpassed the stability of spiro-OMeTAD based PSCs.
● Yang Yang, University of California, Los Angeles, UCLA
● Sang Il Seok, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology
● Liyuan Han, Shanghai Jiao Tong University
● Yi-Bing Cheng, Wuhan University of Technology
● Michael D. McGehee, Stanford University
● Jingbi You, Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences
- 2018, Jingbi You developed the latest perovskite solar cells, the highest power conversion efficiency up to 23.3 % in 2018. During the same year, he published a research paper” Efficient green light-emitting diodes based on quasi-two-dimensional composition and phase engineered perovskite with surface passivation.” (Nature Communications volume 9, Article number: 570 (2018)) And Jingbi You group utilizes Enli Tech LED Photo-Luminescence Quantum Yield Measurement System to measure external quantum efficiency up to 10 %.
Perovskite compounds have attracted recently great attention in photovoltaic research. The devices are typically fabricated using condensed or mesoporous TiO2 as the electron transport layer and 2,2′7,7′-tetrakis-(N,N-dip-methoxyphenylamine)9,9′-spirobifluorene as the hole transport layer. However, the high-temperature processing (450 °C) requirement of the TiO2 layer could hinder the widespread adoption of the technology. In this report, we adopted a low-temperature processing technique to attain high-efficiency devices in both rigid and flexible substrates, using device structure substrate/ITO/PEDOT:PSS/CH3NH3PbI3–xClx/PCBM/Al, where PEDOT:PSS and PCBM are used as hole and electron transport layers, respectively. Mixed halide perovskite, CH3NH3PbI3–xClx, was used due to its long carrier lifetime and good electrical properties. All of these layers are solution-processed under 120 °C. Based on the proposed device structure, power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 11.5% is obtained in rigid substrates (glass/ITO), and a 9.2% PCE is achieved for a polyethylene terephthalate/ITO flexible substrate.
References:
Tsutimu (Tom) Miyasaka
http://ceramics.org/tsutomu-tom-miyasaka
Nam-Gyu Park, (2012) Lead Iodide Perovskite Sensitized All-Solid-State Submicron Thin Film Mesoscopic Solar Cell with Efficiency Exceeding 9%.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3423636/
Mitch Jacoby, Chemical & Engineering News (2014) Tapping Solar Power with Perovskites
https://cbe.nd.edu/news/tapping-solar-power-with-perovskites
Michael Grätzel, (2014). Sequential deposition as a route to high-performance perovskite-sensitized solar cells
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12340
Michael Grätzel, (2017). Perovskite solar cells with CuSCN hole extraction layers yield stabilized efficiencies greater than 20%
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2017/09/27/science.aam5655
Sang Il Seok, (2017). Iodide management in formamidinium-lead-halide–based perovskite layers for efficient solar cells
https://goo.gl/GnjKsa
The OSA DIRECT NEWSLETTER, (2018). Large-area perovskite films go solvent- and vacuum-free
https://goo.gl/zHeD2G
Michael D. McGehee, (2017). 23.6%-efficient monolithic perovskite/silicon tandem solar cells with improved stability
https://www.nature.com/articles/nenergy20179
Yibing Cheng, (2018). Influence of Hot Spot Heating on Stability of Large Size Perovskite Solar Module with a Power Conversion Efficiency of ~14%
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acsaem.8b00803