Environmental assessment of transparent conductive oxide-free efficient flexible organo-lead halide perovskite solar cell

Abstract

Perovskite solar cells (PSCs), one of the third-generation photovoltaic (PV) technologies, have recently become a very popular topic in photovoltaic research. This technology, which is a candidate for commercialization in the future, needs to be evaluated from an environmental point of view. The amount of electricity consumption is the most important factor that directly determines the environmental impact values of photovoltaic cell manufacturing. Transparent conductive oxide (TCO) coated glass is one of the major contributors to electricity consumption in PSC architecture. It is therefore useful to investigate the environmental profile of TCO coated glass-free PSC architecture with conventional PVs. One of the solutions to this issue is manufacturing PSC on a flexible substrate. Flexible PVs are considered to be one of the most promising candidates for mass production with its advantages of low-temperature manufacturing, higher efficiency with a lower weight, portability, and compatibility with a roll to roll fabrication. In this work, we show that the environmental impacts of a representative PSCs with a flexible substrate. While the energy payback time (EPBT) of the flexible PSC is already competitive with commercial PVs, the device must reach a 25-year cell lifetime for its global warming potential (GWP) to reach a reasonable range.