Publications

Journal articles

November 2021

Predicting Low Toxicity and Scalable Solvent Systems for High‐Speed Roll‐to‐Roll Perovskite Manufacturing

Richard Swartwout, Rahul Patidar, Emma Belliveau, Benjia Dou, David Beynon, Peter Greenwood, Nicole Moody, Dane deQuilettes, Moungi Bawendi, Trystan Watson, Vladimir Bulovic

Abstract

Printed lead‐based perovskite photovoltaics (PV) have gained interest due to their potential to be manufactured with scalable roll‐to‐roll techniques. In industrial scale‐up, toxicity of inks can constrain roll‐to‐roll manufacturing due to the added cost of managing toxic effluents. Due to solvent toxicity, few perovskite solution chemistries in published works are scalable to gigawatt production capacity at low cost. Herein, it is shown that for scalable PV production, the use of aprotic polar solvents should be avoided due to their overall toxicity. Compliance with worldwide worker safety regulations for solvent exposure limits could require additional air handling requirements for some solvents, which in turn would affect cost‐effectiveness. It is shown that costs associated with handling of hazardous substances can be significant and estimate an added cost of ¢3.7/W for dimethylformamide (DMF)‐based inks. To solve this problem, a new perovskite ink solvent system is developed that is composed entirely of ether and alcohol, which has an effective exposure limit 14× higher than DMF, making it suitable for industrial coating processes. It is shown that the new ink solvent system is capable of fabricating high‐efficiency perovskite solar cells processed in 1 min on a standard roll‐to‐roll system.

Acknowledgements

This project is part funded by the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Sklodowska—Curie grant agreement No 764787. This work also has received funding from the European Regional Development Fund through the Welsh Government and was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) through the SPECIFIC Innovation and Knowledge Centre (EP/N020863/1). The authors would also like to acknowledge Tata Steel Europe for their support.

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Department of Chemistry
Director, MIT.nano and Professor
Office of the Vice President for Research

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