APERO – APCVD for perovskite solar cells

Silicon perovskite tandem solar cells are currently the most dynamic area within PV research. However, it still seems a long way from the efficiency records on small laboratory cells to the industrialization of the technology. Apart from aspects such as cost efficiency in material selection, long-term stability of the solar cells and Pb-free (Pb: lead) perovskites, the question of the most suitable industrial manufacturing method is currently still open. On the one hand, this must provide sufficient quality of the layers (especially of the perovskite absorber), on the other hand, it must guarantee scalability, throughput and, above all, reproducibility or a sufficiently wide process window ‘ with minimum system complexity or minimum system costs. The APERO project is now evaluating APCVD (Atmospheric Pressure Chemical Vapor Deposition), a unique non-vacuum based and thus cost-effective vapor deposition process with a potentially wide process window for perovskite production. This is the primary goal of the APERO project. The ISFH sub-project has the specific goal of evaluating the processes for APCVD in advance using a smaller laboratory ‘CVD’ system before transferring it to Schmid’s industrial facility. In particular, sequential deposition strategies are in the foreground, in which a halide component to be optimized accordingly (first step) is exposed to a gas phase of the organic components (next step), whereupon conversion to the perovskite takes place. The layers will be characterized opto-electronically, structurally and at the device level at ISFH and compared with co-evaporated reference layers.