LEPABE - Laboratory for Process Engineering, Environment, Biotechnology and Energy, Faculdade de Engenharia, Universidade do Porto, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, Porto, Portugal
ALiCE - Associate Laboratory in Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, Porto, Portugal
LEPABE - Laboratory for Process Engineering, Environment, Biotechnology and Energy, Faculdade de Engenharia, Universidade do Porto, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, Porto, Portugal
ALiCE - Associate Laboratory in Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, Porto, Portugal
LEPABE - Laboratory for Process Engineering, Environment, Biotechnology and Energy, Faculdade de Engenharia, Universidade do Porto, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, Porto, Portugal
ALiCE - Associate Laboratory in Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, Porto, Portugal
LEPABE - Laboratory for Process Engineering, Environment, Biotechnology and Energy, Faculdade de Engenharia, Universidade do Porto, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, Porto, Portugal
ALiCE - Associate Laboratory in Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, Porto, Portugal
LEPABE - Laboratory for Process Engineering, Environment, Biotechnology and Energy, Faculdade de Engenharia, Universidade do Porto, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, Porto, Portugal
ALiCE - Associate Laboratory in Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, Porto, Portugal
LEPABE - Laboratory for Process Engineering, Environment, Biotechnology and Energy, Faculdade de Engenharia, Universidade do Porto, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, Porto, Portugal
ALiCE - Associate Laboratory in Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, Porto, Portugal
A hermetic encapsulation is required to protect perovskite solar cells (PSCs) from the most relevant sources of degradation – humidity and oxygen. According to the IEC61646 PV standard test, commercial photovoltaic devices must be stable from - 40°C to 85°C and relative humidity of 85%. Therefore, to achieve the previously mentioned requirements, the PSCs should be fabricated with thermally stable layers and protected by a long-term stable hermetic encapsulation. Previously, we reported a laser-assisted glass frit encapsulation that successfully achieved long-term stability for PSCs with n-i-p and HTM-free structures. An advanced dual laser beam glass frit sealing process was previously developed and optimized to hermetically encapsulate n-i-p PSCs at 65 ± 5°C for a short processing time of < 60 s. In contrast, printable HTM-Free perovskite solar cells have been reported to be sealed with a single laser beam at 100°C for a long processing time of ca. 35 min. Therefore, this work aims to use the dual laser sealing process to hermetically encapsulate HTM-Free PSCs and mini-modules. Moreover, a 100 x 100 cm2 panel (ca. 234 cm2) was manufactured using dual laser-sealed mini-modules (ca. 6 cm2). The novel sealing process had no impact on the performance of the encapsulated devices, since the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of both small-area PSCs and mini-modules slightly increased from (8.27 ± 0.83)% to (10.75 ± 1.41)% and from (6.08 ± 0.32)% to (6.61 ± 0.49)%, respectively. After sealing 39 mini-modules in series and in parallel, the assembled panel delivered an average PCE of 4.71% when exposed to 789 W m-2 solar irradiation. In conclusion, this study indicates that dual laser sealing has a low impact on the performance of lab-scale devices and mini-modules, and it also reinforces that this sealing procedure can be suitable for encapsulating large-area PSCs.
This is an Open Access abstract, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.
Perovskite Solar Cells, Hermetically Laser-Assisted Glass Frit Encapsulation, Stability, Scalability
Acknowledgments
Marta Pereira and Jorge Martins are grateful to the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) for their PhD grants (references: 2021.06451.BD and SFRH/BD/147201/2019). The authors acknowledge the financial support of the project Baterias 2030, with the reference POCI-01-0247-FEDER-046109, co-funded by Operational Programme for Competitiveness and Internationalization (COMPETE 2020), under the Portugal 2020 Partnership Agreement, through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF)”. LA/P/0045/2020 (ALiCE), UIDB/00511/2020 and UIDP/00511/2020 (LEPABE), funded by national funds through FCT/MCTES (PIDDAC). 2022.05826.PTDC, funded by FEDER funds through COMPETE2020 – Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalização (POCI) and by national funds (PIDDAC) through FCT/MCTES. This work has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme through a FET Proactive research and innovation action under grant agreement No. 101084124. This work is financed by national funds through FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., within the scope of project “TanPT - 2022. 05826.PTDC”.