Simple and effective deposition method for solar cell perovskite films using a sheet of paper

Nazila Zarabinia; Giulia Lucarelli; Reza Rasuli; Francesca De Rossi; Babak Taheri; Hamed Javanbakht; Francesca Brunetti; Thomas M Brown

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2021.103712

Simple and effective deposition method for solar cell perovskite films using a sheet of paper

iScience. 2021 Dec 31;25(2):103712. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2021.103712. eCollection 2022 Feb 18.

Authors

Nazila Zarabinia¹, Giulia Lucarelli², Reza Rasuli¹, Francesca De Rossi², Babak Taheri², Hamed Javanbakht², Francesca Brunetti², Thomas M Brown²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, University of Zanjan, Zanjan, Iran.
² CHOSE (Centre for Hybrid and Organic Solar Energy), Department of Electronic Engineering, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy.

Abstract

Most laboratories employ spin coating with application of antisolvent to achieve high efficiency in perovskite solar cells. However, this method wastes a lot of material and is not industrially usable. Conversely, large area coating techniques such as blade and slot-die require high precision engineering both for deposition of ink and for gas or for electromagnetic drying procedures that replace, out of necessity, anti-solvent engineering. Here we present a simple and effective method to deposit uniform high-quality perovskite films with a piece of paper as an applicator at low temperatures. We fabricated solar cells on flexible PET substrates manually with 11% power conversion efficiency. Deposition after soaking the sheet of paper in a green antisolvent improved the efficiency by 82% compared to when using dry paper as applicator. This new technique enables manual film deposition without any expensive equipment and has the potential to be fully automated for future optimization and exploitation.

Keywords: Electronic materials; Energy materials; Surface science.