Issue 11, 2014

Environmentally responsible fabrication of efficient perovskite solar cells from recycled car batteries

Abstract

Organolead halide perovskite solar cells (PSCs) show great promise as a new large-scale and cost-competitive photovoltaic technology. Power conversion efficiencies over 15% to 19% have been achieved within 18 to 24 months of development, and thus perovskite materials have attracted great attention in photovoltaic research. However, the manufacture of PSCs raises environmental concerns regarding the over-production of raw lead ore, which has harmful health and ecological effects. Herein, we report an environmentally responsible process to fabricate efficient PSCs by reusing car batteries to simultaneously avoid the disposal of toxic battery materials and provide alternative, readily available lead sources for PSCs. Perovskite films, assembled using materials sourced from either recycled battery materials or high-purity commercial reagents, show the same material characteristics (i.e., crystallinity, morphology, optical absorption, and photoluminescence properties) and identical photovoltaic performance (i.e., photovoltaic parameters and resistances of electron recombination), indicating the practical feasibility of recycling car batteries for lead-based PSCs.

Graphical abstract: Environmentally responsible fabrication of efficient perovskite solar cells from recycled car batteries

Associated articles

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
26 Mar 2014
Accepted
23 Jul 2014
First published
23 Jul 2014

Energy Environ. Sci., 2014,7, 3659-3665

Author version available

Environmentally responsible fabrication of efficient perovskite solar cells from recycled car batteries

P. Chen, J. Qi, M. T. Klug, X. Dang, P. T. Hammond and A. M. Belcher, Energy Environ. Sci., 2014, 7, 3659 DOI: 10.1039/C4EE00965G

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements