Researchers from Skoltech's Institute of Problems of Chemical Physics and Moscow State University have designed an inorganic perovskite solar batteries. The new devices reportedly exhibit very high efficiency in light conversion (10.5%).
The team said that: "our devices demonstrate tremendous efficiency and excellent repeatability of electric characteristics from sample to sample". "The obtained results demonstrate the high potential of inorganic complex halogenides which offers new opportunities for target design of photoactive materials for effective and stable perovskite solar batteries."
Batteries made from perovskites are meant to be cheaper than those based on silica and their production is non-toxic. These batteries can be made thin and flexible in order to place them on the surfaces of various curvatures.
The team states that nowadays, the best efficiency of conversion light into electricity is achieved by hybrid perovskite photocells based on organic-inorganic materials APbI3 where A can be various organic cations (A=CH3NH2+ or HC(NH2)2+). The performance coefficient of laboratory prototypes of such devices reaches 22% approaching the characteristics of photoelements based on crystalline silica. However, the commercialization of those setups is often hindered by their poor service durability. Upon functioning, they deteriorate very fast due to thermal and photochemical decomposition of perovskites.
The most efficient approach to creating stable perovskite materials is a complete replacement of organic cations to inorganic ones. However, such substitution is normally accompanied by a decrease in the devices' efficiency. For example, the solar cells based on CsPbI3 created by precipitation from the solution showed only 2-3% efficiency in light conversion.
In the new study, however, the Russian team suggested producing CsPbI3 using another technology - thermic co-evaporation of cesium and lead iodides. As a result, the solar batteries based on these inorganic perovskites have demonstrated a stable performance efficiency figure of about 10%.
