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.

KEYWORDS:

• Life Cycle Assessment
• perovskite PVs
• sustainable Energy

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey [TUBITAK BIDEB 2214/A].

Notes on contributors

Huseyin Sarialtin

Huseyin Sarialtin completed his M.S. degree at UC Riverside. Following his degree, he pursued in depth research experience, working as a researcher in Izmir Institute of Technology and assessing photovoltaic technologies on a European Union project in Augsburg, Germany. He worked at the Bren School at UC Santa Barbara as a visiting researcher applying sustainable energy analysis on next-generation photovoltaics. He earned his PhD degree titledLife Cycle Assessment of Perovskite Solar Cells in 2019.

Roland Geyer

Roland Geyer is Professor of Industrial Ecology at the Bren School of Environmental Science Management, University of California, Santa Barbara. He studies the relationship between environmental performance, economic viability, and technical and operational feasibility of pollution prevention strategies. Learn more about Roland and his work on www.rolandgeyer.com

Ceylan Zafer

Ceylan Zafer is a Professor in Energy Technology department in Solar Energy Institute, Ege University, Turkey. His research interests lie in the area of solution processable organic/hybrid materials for opto-electronic devices. These semiconductor materials possess a viable platform for printed, large area, flexible and wearable electronics that can be used as solar cells, smart windows, OLEDs, OFETs, sensors and bio-electronics, photo-catalysts. Professor Zafer is particularly interested in interface engineering for organic/hybrid solar cells, perovskite solar cells, dye sensitized solar cells, transparent solar cells for building integrated photovoltaics and stability/degradation studies for long lifetime perovskite and organic solar cells.He has led projects on i) Donor-Acceptor LOw Band gap conjugated polymers for organic solar; ii) non-fullerene acceptors as ETL for perovskite solar cells; iii) upscaling and module fabrication of perovskite solar cells; and iv) Quantum Dot/conjugate polymer composites for opto-electronic devices.