Perovskite Solar Cell Degradation Driven by Collector Electrode and Prototypical Demonstration for Low-Power Electronics

Powering the Internet of Things (IoT) with renewable, efficient, and green energy sources is a critical and growing need in today's world. Solar power as a renewable energy source has the potential to significantly boost the expansion of the IoT ecosystem. And the remarkable increase in Power Conversion Efficiency (PCE) associated with perovskite solar cells, with PCE surpassing 25% has garnered a high interest in fueling the IoT expansion. However, the enduring stability of perovskite solar cells under operational conditions and environmental storage remains a central challenge for their successful commercialization and needs to be addressed for successfully using them in low-power electronics for IoT. The perovskite solar cell is formed using multiple layers and failure of a single layer causes the entire cell's performance to be compromised. Here we report on the degradation of perovskite solar cells driven by the choice of the common electrodes (Ag and Au). In this report, we have conducted a comprehensive analysis on the impact of pinholes of the hole collector layer with Au and Ag electrodes for the degradation mechanism associated with two types of perovskites,
$\text{MAPbI}_{3}$
and a triple cation absorber, Cso.
$\text{osFA}_{0.79}\text{MA}_{0.\iota}{}_{6}\mathrm{P}\text{bI}_{2.4}\text{sBr}0.5^{\underline{\mathrm{s}}}$
. For material characterization we used photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy, while for device measurements, we analyzed the PCE with environmental storage. Finally, a prototypical demonstration followed, where we used our array of fabricated cells to power up an external circuit validated by the illumination of a low-power LED. These solar cells open up avenues to incorporate such devices to power up the IoT.