Graduation Year

2020

Document Type

Campus Only Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Physics & Astronomy

Reader 1

David Tanenbaum

Reader 2

Janice Hudgings

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© 2020 Hyunjin Hong

Abstract

Renewable energy solutions are a crucial part of the global effort to make up for the rapid increase in global energy demand without further inducing climate change. Of those solutions, mesoporous perovskite solar cells (MPSCs) provide a potential solution to those demands because of their low production costs arising from facile fabrication processes and inexpensive source materials. The MPSC we fabricate and characterize in Tanenbaum Lab is a mesoporous hole-transport-material-free (HTM-free) methylammonium lead halide (\ce{MAPbI3}) perovskite with a carbon counter electrode. We employ a solution based screen printing process not unlike that of printing a T-shirt, making our production method conducive to scaling and mass production. We tested lifetime performances of cells fabricated in the summer of 2019, and we found that under continuous irradiation, our cells fail within the span of a few days, 5.6 days for a module of 6 cells in series, and 4.25 days for an individual cell. While we do not yet have a full explanation for why, we infer that the main driver of performance degradation is closely related to changes in photocurrent generation within the cell. We used LBIC and I-V measurements to characterize our cells, and laid the groundwork for future endeavors in testing the various parameters contributing to the stability of our MPSC.

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