Proceedings of International Conference Asia-Pacific Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics (AP-HOPV17)
Publication date: 7th November 2016
Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have achieved certified power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) of 22.1% by low cost and low temperature solution processing. However, these materials are based on toxic lead and pose a threat to the commercialization efforts. Our efforts focus on screening criteria for defect-tolerant photovoltaic (PV) absorbers, identifying several classes of semiconducting compounds with band structures and dielectric constants similar to lead-halide perovskites. Further, we evaluate the carrier lifetimes of several Pb-free PV absorbers using a consistent combined experimental and theoretical approach. The carrier lifetimes of five candidate materials exceed 1 ns, a threshold for promising PV device performance. However, there are variations between these materials, and none achieve carrier lifetimes as high as those of the lead halide perovskites, suggesting that the understanding of defect-tolerant semiconductors are incomplete. Additional work is ongoing to add more complexity to our models to obtain Pb-free materials with charge carrier lifetimes that exceed 1 ns.