Stretchable Perovskite Solar Cells Are Conducive To The Development Of Flexible Wearable Devices

Perovskite solar cells have attracted widespread attention due to their superior optoelectronic performance, lower manufacturing cost, and lightness and portability.

In recent years, people have devoted themselves to developing perovskite into a new material with flexible and stretchable properties because perovskite is light and thin, and the thickness of the substrate is within 1 mm. However, the existence of some shortcomings of the perovskite film, such as brittle material and not easy to bend, limit its application, and grain boundary defects are also the fatal weakness of the decline in optoelectronic and mechanical properties.

Recently, Chinese scientists have made major breakthroughs in the research of flexible perovskite solar cells, Yiwang Chen, Xiaotian Hu from Nanchang University and  Fengyu Li from Jinan University  incorporate a self‐healing polyurethane (s-PU) with dynamic oxime−carbamate bonds as a scaffold into the perovskite films, which simultaneously enhances crystallinity and passivates grain boundary of the perovskite films.

The researchers proved through electrochemical tests that the stretchable perovskite solar cells with s-PU deliver a stabilized efficiency of 19.15% with negligible hysteresis, which are comparable to the performance on rigid substrates. The perovskite solar cells can maintain over 90% of the initial efficiency after 3000 h under air environment because of their self-encapsulating structure.

More importantly, the self‐healing function of s-PU scaffold is in-situ verified. The s-PU can release the mechanical stress and repair the crack at grain boundary on multiple levels. The devices recover 88% of their original efficiency after 1000 cycles at 20% stretch. This ingenious growth strategy of crystalline

This makes it possible to achieve high-performance flexible, stretchable perovskite solar cells, and provides new methods for the development of flexible and stretchable electronic products.

references:

Xiangchuan Meng et al. Stretchable perovskite solar cells with extremely recoverable performance, Angew, 2020.https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.202003813