Optimizing the Lifespan of Perovskite Solar Cells with Polycarbonate Polymer Encapsulation

One of the main challenges for perovskite solar cell (PSCs) structures is their high sensitivity to humidity and ambient temperature, which significantly lowers the lifespan of these devices. Low stability of this devices is considered one of the principal limitations to make them commercialized. To increase the stability of the solar cell is to encapsulate the solar cell. The encapsulation is to cover the device with a non-reactive material, which prevents the penetration of ambient moisture and increases the thermal stability of the cell. If the uncoated device is exposed to continuous incident light for several hours, its structure is damaged while encapsulated device has a longer duration time. Several methods have been proposed for encapsulating a perovskite solar cell. The principal strategy of these methods involves deposition of a thin layer of polycarbonate polymer on the perovskite solar cell structure, resulting in layers of the desired structure. After fabrication and encapsulation process, the order of the various layers are FTO / bl-TiO2 / mp-TiO2 / Perovskite (CH3NH3PbI3) / Spiro-OMETAD / Au / Polycarbonate Polymer. To increase the effective stability, the glass coating is placed on the polycarbonate polymer. After acquiring sufficient adhesion between the glass coating and the polymer layer on the structure of PSCs, UV epoxy is used to seal the whole structure. Having performed the encapsulation, the samples were exposed every day to 85% constant humidity and 85°C temperature for 10 hours and it was observed that the cell efficiency, under the mentioned conditions and after successive measurements, maintained to a high extent.