Proceedings of 13th Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics (HOPV21)
Publication date: 11th May 2021
The development of reliable encapsulation is a key factor for protecting perovskite solar cells from extrinsic degradation and an important step to commercialization. The use of edge sealing materials has already been proven effective for rigid substrates [1]. However, for flexible devices, a different encapsulation strategy must be developed. Adhesives must cover the whole device and, therefore, be chemically compatible with the top layers. Additionally, they must be thermally and light stable, have low oxygen and water vapor transmission rates and be processed at low temperatures. In this study, epoxy and acrylic-based adhesives were tested over blade-coated MAPI devices and the encapsulation was evaluated with performance measurements, thermal stability and calcium tests. Although causing discoloration around the cells, over the area without the evaporated top electrode, the epoxy adhesive showed great performance after encapsulation and under thermal stress. This strategy was used to compare the stability of PEDOT:PSS and NiO as HTL. After an initial drop of 40% in performance, the device with NiO kept its efficiency stable for over 5500h under 85°C. These results show that this method can be used for evaluating the stability of PSC and that, with a proper buffer layer, epoxy adhesives can be used for flexible encapsulation.