Enhancement opportunities for circularity of

perovskite solar devices

EGTM79 - Environmental Analysis and Legislation (Assignment 1)

Executive summary – Perovskite solar cells are
an emerging solar technology with very high-
power conversion efficiency of 25.5%.(1) To
ensure the future successful deployment of the
perovskite solar cells, their life cycles are
assessed to identify possible area for circularity
enhancement. Choosing less critical materials
will affect the module environmental impacts
positively. The major primary energy
consumption in the module are the fabrication
steps, which some components, such as ETL and
TCO, have their environmentally friendly
alternatives which requires less energy for
processing. Moreover, adapting suitable
methodology for deposition may improve the
material efficiency during the fabrication
processes. At the end-of-life of the solar cells,
the substrate should be recovered for proper
disposal and recycling. FTO/glass may be
recovered and reuse multiple time without
significant efficiency drop(2,3). The other
components such as TiO2 or PbI2 will require
further study to determine the energy efficiency
and its environmental impacts offsets. As
perovskite solar devices are unstable when they
are scale up(4), it is more practical for them to be
marketed as part of electronic devices instead of
electrical power generation source like their Si-
based counterpart.
In an effort to tackle with climate crisis, solar
photovoltaics (PVs) was made to be the fastest
growing electricity generation source in 2021
with 18% growth from 2020.(5) Unfortunately,
the expansion of PVs comes at cost. Whereas by
2050, the cumulative solar PVs waste is
predicted to reach around 78 million tonnes.(6)
Furthermore, the cost of PVs is expected to rise
as raw materials cost rises along with the
transportation cost.(7)
Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) are one of the most
emerging third-generation photovoltaic solar
cells as they have outstanding power conversion
efficiency (PCE) with the record of 25.5% PCE as
of 2021.(1) However, the current issues PSCs are
facing are the instability of the cells,
components’ toxicity, and its brief lifetime in
contrast to its short energy payback time.(8) In
order to tackle with the short lifetime of PSCs,
circular economy can be adapted into the supply
chain of the PSCs to minimise its environmental
impacts and to improve its recyclability, hence,
enhanced circularity.
2. Discussion
2.1. Enhancing circularity
2.1.1. Raw materials

1. Introduction

In order to avoid dangerous climate change, it is

crucial to minimise the carbon emission and
other pollutants to the environment before
irreversible damage is caused. Circular economy
is one of the solutions to be adapted into the
Figure 1 Basic planar PSCs architecture; (a) Metal electrode;
production and consumption of goods and (b) Hole transporting layer; (c) Perovskite film; (d) Electron
services to tackle the wasteful consumption and transporting layer; (e) Transparent conductive
preserve the limited precious resources. oxide/glass(9)

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 PSCs are made up of layers of substrate which Quantitatively, ITO substrate uses 2.5 times the
are metal electrode, hole transporting layer energy used by FTO substrate(8), which poses a
(HTL), perovskite film, electron transporting significant energy saving.
layer (ETL) and transparent conductive oxide
(TCO)/glass as represented in Figure 1. These
layers are essential in a functioning PSCs with
some variation depending on its architecture
and manufacturing techniques.

Gold (Au) or silver (Ag) or aluminium (Al) may be

used as metal electrode.(8) Evidently, using Au
or Ag will make the module more costly
compared to Al as they are precious metals and
more critical than Al.(10) Moreover, Al has much
lower global warming potential than Au or Ag
making it a more environmentally friendly
alternative as metal electrode.(10)

A c-TiO2 and Spiro-MeOTAD are the most widely Figure 3 Estimated raw materials cost for major component
of a perovskite solar cell per m2 represented in pie chart
used materials for ETL and HTL respectively.(8)
(more detail in Appendix 1)
Alternatively, ZnO can be used as ETL substrate
in PSCs which has lower GHG emission factor Lead (Pb) is widely used material in perovskite;
than TiO2 by 25.55 gCO2eq/kWh.(11) however, it is also a highly toxic component that
also environmentally unfriendly.(8) Alternative
The most expensive substrate layer of a PSC is
to Pb is tin (Sn), but the Sn-based solar cells are
the TCO/glass layer as it can make up 90% of the
highly sensitive to oxygen and worsen the
raw materials cost for major components in a
device’s performance.(8) Another way to deal
PSC as seen in Figure 3.(9) The widely used TCO
with lead toxicity is to ensure that the module is
materials are indium-doped tin oxide (ITO) and
to encapsulated preventing accidental
fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) where ITO
leeching(11); and to recover the component
provide higher electrical conductivity but is
which will be discuss further in End-of-life.
expensive and environmentally unfriendly.(12)

Figure 2 Comparison of global warming potential and primary energy consumption between landfill and recycling scenarios for the six
investigated PSC architectures.(11)

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 2.1.2. Fabrication
In the manufacturing processes of PSCs, there
are materials preparation steps and substrates
coating steps. The formation of perovskite film’s
morphology and crystallinity will determine the
final performance of the devices.(8) One of the
ways to deposit the perovskite material is dual-
source vacuum thermal evaporation (DSVD)
which produce smooth and uniform perovskite
film, but it is costly.(8) An alternative low-cost
technique that is commonly used to deposit
perovskite later is solution process as it allows a
uniform layer to be deposited on the module.(8)
Spin coating is used to deposit the PbI2 layer on
the substrate in the two-step sequential
method, which can be scale up and optimise
using slot-die coating method to reduce material
waste in a commercial-scale modules.(11)
Another fabrication process that can be
optimised is thermal evaporation, which is
dependent on vacuum level. Alternatively,
sputtering may be used to replace thermal
evaporation as it generally has shorter
processing time and less dependent on vacuum
level(11), hence, more energy saving.
Evidently from both primary energy
consumption perspective and global warming
perspective, the assembly of PSCs devices has
much more prominent environmental effects
than the materials embedded as seen in Figure
2.(11) This suggests that the processing of PSCs
should be optimised in future studies including
utilising renewable energy source for fabrication
processes in order to reduce its environmental
impacts to ensure not only PSCs can be a
renewable energy source, but also a sustainable
one.
In the making of energy saving PSCs, alternative
substrate may be used to lower the energy used
in fabrication. For example, by using TiO2 as ETL
in a PSC, the deposited TiO2 must be annealed at
high temperature which not only expensive but
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make the commercialisation of PSCs
impractical.(13) Alternatively, SnO2 may be
utilized as ETL as it can be processed at low
temperature which not only cost saving, but also
deal with the hysteresis issue in mesoporous
TiO2.(13) Another alternative to TiO2 is ZnO,
which can also be processed at low
temperature.(8)
2.1.3. End-of-life
As PSCs are manufactured using solution-based
methods, the substrate may also be recovered
under a low-tech environment which can
potentially lead to cheaper materials recovery.
Furthermore, some components of PSCs may be
recovered without having to go through
recycling processes which save the energy on
materials recovery and deposition on to the
recycled PSCs.
The layer that may be recover and reuse without
significant PCE loss is the FTO/glass substrate,
which may be reused multiple times.(2) This may
lead to significant cost saving for the
remanufactured PSCs and major energy saving in
soda-lime glass production, hence, much lower
emission.
Another possible substrate recovery is by
recovering TiO2/FTO/Glass altogether. A study
(Zhu et. Al) has shown that the recovery and
reusage of TiO2 along with the FTO/glass only
cause minimal change in PCE.(14) Even though,
the raw material cost of ETL is relatively low
compared to other components (see Appendix
1), The removal of TiO2 requires the use of
dimethylformamide (DMF)(2). DMF is a
hazardous chemical which also require proper
disposal which can potentially lead to additional
carbon emission to process the solution.
Therefore, the recovery of TiO2/FTO/Glass
should be considered to remanufacture a PSC to
minimise environmental impacts. Nevertheless,
more studies are still required to make the
conclusion if TiO2/FTO/Glass should be reused
 multiple times as another study (Binek et. al)
suggested that if the substrates are reused, they
may cause instability in PSCs and may lose up to
40% of the original PCE by the third cycle.(2) In
making a lower grade PSCs, it should be possible
to reuse the substrate once as more than 80% of
the remanufactured cell’s PCE is preserved(2).
During the removal process of Spiro-MeOTAD,
the substrate is immersed chlorobenzene which
are hazardous compound not only to human but
also to the aquatic environment(15). This can be
avoided by using a more environmentally
friendly alternative chemical, ethyl acetate.(2)
For the toxicity concern of Pb in perovskite film,
at the end of the service, Pb can be recovered
and properly dispose after the removal of
methylammonium iodide. The substrate is then
immersed in DMF to dissolve the PbI2 which can
later be separated from DMR under vacuum.(2)
There is also a potential to the recovered PbI2 as
Figure 4 ‘Cradle-to-grave’ system boundary for LBSO module fabrication consisting of raw material acquisition, module assembly,
power generation and end of life. BL, blocking layer; BSO, BaSnO3(11)
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it may be reused to remanufacture another PSC
with lower PCE (around 15% loss from original
PCE).(2) On the other hand, the recovered PbI2
solution may be recrystallised and reuse in the
remanufacturing which reduced the PCE loss to
less than 10%.(2) Nevertheless, more research
must be done to evaluate the energy
consumption of the PbI2 recrystallisation to
remove impurities if the PCE differences may
provide sufficient offset to its environmental
impacts.
2.2. Supply chain
Unfortunately for many electronic devices, the
raw materials must be transported
internationally as there are few metals
extraction sites globally. This may also cause the
rise in raw material cost and worsening scarcity
in the future, if the freight rate continues to rise,
the material supplies are monopolised and any
change in the geopolitical climate.(10) With the
aim of minimising the materials supply risks, the
raw materials, especially precious metals, should
be recovered from degraded PSCs to improve
the independency of the PSCs fabrication from
virgin materials.
From Figure 4, the linear supply chain of PSCs
fabrication is visualised where cradle-to-grave
system is applied.(11) T improve the circularity
of PSCs, the cradle-to-cradle methodology can
be applied by circulating the FTO glass and TiO2
for remanufacturing PSCs. This not only
optimised the energy spent of virgin materials
extraction but also its environmental impacts
which is expected to rise when the natural
supply is depleting. The improved circularity
diagram is as represented in Figure 5.
Figure 5 Schematic diagram on how PSCs circularity could
be enhanced by recovering raw materials and using low-
carbon energy source as the main fabrication energy input.
2.3. Policy and legislation
The Department of Energy & Climate Change
(DECC) had set out a Solar PV strategy where not
only the deployment of solar PV is encouraged
but also ensure the sustainability of the
infrastructure controlling the carbon impact and
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balancing the grid system to support those solar
PVs.(16)
Additionally, under the Waste Electrical and
Electronic Equipment (WEEE) regulation, the PV
producers are required to finance the collection
of PVs for household panels and to finance both
collection and recycling of the other panels.(17)
These regulations allow the panels to be
collected and process accordingly which may
also allow new business to emerge potentially
from the solar PVs waste collection and
materials recovery. Currently the recovered raw
materials are still more expensive than the
pristine materials where it costs $20-30 to
recycle each panel that only contain $3-4 worth
of reusable materials.(18) However, this may
change with the economy of scale and the
lessening material supply making it more
profitable to recover the raw materials in the
future. It is also important to recognise that,
more efficient and cheaper silicon based solar
PVs recycling may not be achieved in a few years
as the lifetime of those panels are much longer
compared to PSCs which delays the
accumulation of WEEE.
2.4. Challenges and limitation
Most of the data present in this paper are from
lab scaled supply chain, which helps to provide
some insights of the possible strengths and
weaknesses in the commercial scale supply
chains.
The main challenges of scaling up perovskite
modules are its materials uniformity which
worsen as the area get larger and stacking
material gets less consistent regardless of
deposition technique.(4) This causes the PCE to
fall below 18% when the active area is greater
than 1 cm2.(4) Before the technological
advancement could resolve the issue, PSCs could
be marketed as smaller cells to be used in
smaller electronic devices; i.e., unmanned drone
or environmental sensors, instead of being used
as on-grid power generation.
Additionally, to ensure the PSCs are protected
and extend its lifetime during service,
encapsulation of the substrate is essential as
PSCs are also known to be sensitive to water
damage as perovskite material can be
irreversibly degraded and transformed if
exposed to too much humidity.(19) Currently
there is no universal PSCs encapsulation
method(11). Yet, from what we have learn from
encapsulating other type of third generation
solar devices, moisture still slowly penetrate the
encapsulation materials which may also limit the
longevity of PSCs devices.(19)
3. Conclusion
To summarise the findings in this paper,
enhancement opportunities for circularity of
PSCs can be initiated from the material selection
stage to the end-of-life.
cycle of recovery and how the longevity of the
modules is affected. Similarly, with PbI2
recovery, additional information is required to
determine the longevity, stability, and energy
efficiency of the remanufactured PSCs of the
recovered solution and recrystallised PbI2.
The main short coming with the current
information is that PSCs are not currently
scalable due to the present-day technological
limitations. However, it is possible for PSCs to be
marketed toward smaller electronical devices
which may not require long servicing time such
as sensors or unmanned drones, instead of on-
grid electricity generation.
4. References
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components should be considered in the making
of PSCs, i.e., Al for metal electrode instead of Au
or Ag which has higher global warming potential,
and more environmentally friendly alternative
for ETL or TCO.
3.
By choosing different materials, the major
energy consumption in fabricating PSCs can be
reduced using lower processing temperature.
Moreover, by using alternative methodologies
such as sputtering and slot-die coating, less
materials are wasted which minimise the
4.
production environmental impacts.
After the service, PSCs should be collected to
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FTO/glass may be recovered and reused multiple
time without hindering the recycled PSCs’ PCE.
However, more data is needed to determine if
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