Within the "ScaleUp" project we will develop numerical tools that will bring perovskite solar cells closer to market applicability

3 year project, funded within the European Solar-era.net call

Recipient Dr. Selina Olthof

Background: Halide perovskites have emerged as one of the most studied semiconductors due to their excellent optoelectronic properties. This is evidenced by the rapid development of perovskite solar cells with a record certified photoconversion efficiency of 24.2%, similar to those of silicon cells. Nonetheless, industrial application of is critically hampered by instability issues, including intrinsic, environmental, and operational factors. Instability is attributed to several chemical and dynamical processes that occur at very distinct time scales, like slow ionic rearrangements and physical and chemical interactions in the bulk and at interfaces with contact layers.

ScaleUp Project: To overcome these issues we formed a consortium of experimental physicists, theoreticians, device engineers, and an industrial partner. Based on results from fundamental material investigation and device characteristics, we will develop versatile numerical models for large scale molecular dynamics, capable to capture the physics and chemistry that trigger processes causing instability issues. The availability of such numerical tools and a resulting user-friendly software, with the potential to describe with reasonable accuracy complex halide perovskite alloys for large sizes and in the long-time scale, will make it possible to accomplish key advances to extend the durability of perovskite based solar cells and to provide software and testing benchmarks to enable researchers to achieve this goal.

In Cologne, we will contribute by measuring relevant halide perovskite properties that are needed as input data for the numerical simulation. Such properties include changes in density of states, crystal structure, phase segregation, chemical interactions, or the appearance of degradation species. Various device-relevant perovskite composition and contact materials (transport layers) will be tested for this.

Our ScaleUp partners are:

• Juan Antonio Anta, Universidad Pablo de Olavide de Sevilla (Spain)
• Maytal Caspary Toroker, Israel Institute of Technology (Israel)
• Shuxia Tao, Technical University of Eindhoven (The Netherlands)
• Industrial partner, Fluxim Inc. (Switzerland)