Eliminating the Perovskite Solar Cell Manufacturing Bottleneck via High-Speed Flexography

TL;DR

This paper introduces a high-speed flexographic printing method combined with rapid annealing to produce ultrathin NiOx charge transport layers for perovskite solar cells, significantly accelerating manufacturing while maintaining high efficiency.

Contribution

It demonstrates a scalable, high-speed printing process for inorganic charge transport layers with improved uniformity and device performance, enabling faster perovskite solar cell fabrication.

Findings

Achieved ultrafast (60 m/min) printing of NiOx HTLs with high uniformity.

Produced perovskite solar cells with PCE > 15% and Jsc of 22.4 mA/cm2.

Reduced processing time by 60 times while maintaining device quality.

Abstract

Perovskite solar cells have potential to deliver terawatt-scale power via low-cost manufacturing. However, scaling is limited by slow, high-temperature annealing of the inorganic transport layers and the lack of reliable, large-area methods for depositing thin (< 30 nm) charge transport layers (CTLs). We present a method for scaling ultrathin NiOx hole transport layers (HTLs) by pairing high-speed (60 m/min) flexographic printing with rapidly annealed sol-gel inks to achieve the fastest reported process for fabrication of inorganic CTLs for perovskites. By engineering precursor rheology for rapid film-leveling, NiOx HTLs were printed with high uniformity and ultralow pinhole densities resulting in photovoltaic performance exceeding that of spin-coated devices. Integrating these printed transport layers in planar inverted PSCs allows rapid fabrication of high efficiency (PCE > 15%) Cs(x)FA(1-x)PbI solar cells with improved short circuit currents (Jsc) of 22.4 mA/cm2. Rapid annealing of the HTL accelerates total processing time by 60X, while maintaining the required balance of optoelectronic properties and the chemical composition for effective hole collection. These results build an improved understanding of ultrathin NiOx and reveal opportunities to enhance device performance via scalable manufacturing of inorganic CTLs.