Presentation on the Paper

Preventing Lead Leakage with Built-in Resin Layers

for Sustainable Perovskite Solar Cells

Authors: Shangshang Chen, Yehao Deng, Xun Xiao, Shuang Xu,

Peter N. Rudd, Jinsong Huang

Journal: Nature Sustainability (March, 2021)

Presented by
Md. Mahfuzul Haque
 Toxicity of Pb-based Perovskite
• Metal halide perovskites (MHPs) have been regarded as a star material for
next-generation low cost photovoltaic technologies, already demonstrating
a certified efficiency of over 25% for single junction solar cells and 29% for
perovskite/silicon tandem solar cells.
• All perovskite solar cells (PSCs), those show high efficiency contain Pb-based
MHPs. But Pb are toxic to the environment.
• Process of leaking out of Pb: During rainfall Pb can leaked out.
• Environmental Hazard: Leaked Pb can enter the soil and contaminate soil
or underground water.

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 Replacement of Pb and Problems
• Researchers have already paid their attention to Pb-free perovskites, such as tin
(Sn)- based perovskites to avoid Pb. But there are some major drawbacks of
them.
• Drawbacks of Sn-based perovskites are:
– Pb-free PSCs have exhibited much lower efficiencies.
– Sn-based perovskites show low stability due to the oxidation of Sn.

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 Proposed Methods for Preventing Pb Leakage
• Encapsulation of perovskite modules with a front cover glass sealed with a self-
healing polymer encapsulant.
Outcomes: This strategy was able to prevent water from penetrating the
damaged perovskite solar modules and reduce the Pb leakage rate.

Drawbacks: Manufacturing cost will be increased significantly due to the

use of an additional piece of glass into perovskite modules. Pb leakage from
damaged solar panels cannot be completely prevented upon exposure to
rainwater and extreme weather conditions.

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 Proposed Methods for Preventing Pb Leakage (Contd.)
• A hole transport polymer of alkoxy-polytetraethylene glycol was also
reported to chelate Pb ions.
Outcomes: Pb leakage of PSCS was reduced.
Drawbacks: Reported 27-nm-thick alkoxy-polytetraethylene glycol layer is
too thin to completely adsorb the Pb ions in the 500-nm-thick perovskite layer.
Increasing its thickness might reduce device efficiency.

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 Proposed Methods for Preventing Pb Leakage (Contd.)
• Pb-adsorbing layers were applied to both the front and back sides of
PSCs.
Outcomes: Pb leakage can be reduced by 96%.
Drawbacks: the long-term exposure of the Pb-adsorbing layer to
rainwater containing various metal cations, such as Pb2+, Cd2+, Ca2+, or Mg2+
can saturate and defunctionalize the Pb-adsorbing layers. Besides, the surface
Pb-adsorbing layer can be damaged by UV radiation in sunlight or cleaning
processes to remove sand or dust from perovskite solar modules.

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 Ideal Strategy of Preventing Pb Leakage

• An ideal strategy to prevent Pb leakage should be

- able to rapidly capture Pb ions once perovskites are decomposed

by rainwater.
- operate long term regardless of external factors such as rain, dust or
UV light.

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 Newly Proposed Method for Preventing Pb Leakage
• The introduction of a mesoporous Pb-adsorbent within the perovskite layer
- blocks potential exit channels
- minimizes Pb leakage from damaged perovskite solar modules.
Pb-adsorbent is a low-cost sulfonic acid cation exchange resin. It has a
high adsorption capacity for Pb2+ cations due to its

- mesoporous structure with large surface area

- strong bonding with Pb2+ and
- great selectivity for Pb2+ in water.

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 Chemical Structure of Pb Absorbent
• The chemical structure of the Pb-adsorbing

resin used in this work is shown in Fig. 1.

• It is a cross-linked styrene-divinyl benzene

copolymer with the sulfonic acid groups acting as

adsorption sites for metal ions such as Pb2+, Ca2+
Figure 1
and Mg2+.
• It has a large internal surface area due to its nanoscopically porous
structure with nanoparticle sizes of ~40 nm.

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 Structure of the Proposed Perovskite Solar Cell
• The resin-scaffolded CH3NH3PbI3 PSCs were fabricated as the structure of
Fig. 2. The Pb-adsorbing resins were first coated onto a PTAA-covered ITO
substrate using a room temperature blading process.

• Cross-sectional SEM image of the resin-scaffolded CH3NH3PbI3 PSC is

shown in Fig. 3.

Figure 2 Figure 3

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 Transmittance
The transmittance spectra of the PTAA-covered ITO glass substrates with and
without embedded Pb-adsorbing resins is shown in Fig. 4. The incorporation of Pb-
adsorbing resins underneath the perovskite layer was found to have a negligible
influence on the transmittance of PTAA-covered ITO glass substrates.

Figure 4

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 Photovoltaic Performances of Prepared PSC

Parameter PSC without PSC with

Pb-absorbent Pb-Absorbent
VOC (V) 1.09 1.13
JSC (mA cm-2) 22.6 22.5
FF (%) 80.1 80.6
PCE (%) 19.8 20.6

Figure 4

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Photovoltaic Performances of Prepared PSC (cntd.)

Figure 5 Figure 6

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 Photovoltaic Performances of Prepared PSC (cntd.)
Fig. 7 shows the compared operational stability of encapsulated PSC with and
without Pb-absorbent resin for 500 hours at 45 oC. Mesoporous Pb-adsorbing resins
not only have no detrimental effects on the operational stability of the PSCs but also can
passivate the perovskite and improve the stabilized PCE from 19.4% to 20.4%.

Figure 7
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 Prepared Devices for Pb Leakage Test
Device I: Encapsulated by a piece of cover glass without any Pb adsorbents.
Device II: 300-nm-thick Pb-adsorbing resin layer on the surface of the glass.
Device III: Mesoporous Pb-adsorbing resins underneath the perovskite layer.
Device IV: Thick layer of Pb-adsorbing resins on top of the metal electrode
while also replacing the cover glass with a plastic sheet.

Figure 8

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 Pb Leakage Test
Procedures:
• Each PSC module was broken by dropping balls of ice to simulate hail
damage to perovskite modules under real operating conditions.
• Water was dripped onto the broken modules to simulate highly acidic rainfall.

Figure 9
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 Pb Leakage Test (cont.)
Procedures:
• Contaminated water passing through the damaged sub-modules for 1 hour was
collected in a centrifuge tube, and the Pb content was measured by inductively
coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS).
Results:

Figure 10

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 Pb Leakage Test (cont.)
Results:
In water-dripping tests, it was found that the damaged encapsulation glass
provided another Pb leakage pathway. To eliminate Pb leakage from the
cover glass side the encapsulation glass was replaced with a plastic sheet
(Device IV) that is more resistant to the impact of hail and coated another thick
layer of Pb-adsorbing resins (>5μm) on top of metal electrodes
to ideally trap more Pb.

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 Summary
• The introduction of mesoporous Pb-adsorbing resins can also passivate the
perovskite layer to improve the stabilized PCE from 19.4% to 20.4% with no
detrimental impacts on device stability.
• The mesoporous Pb-adsorbing resins underneath perovskite absorbers are
more effective in reducing Pb leakage than when coated on the glass surface.
• This work provides a new, low-cost and highly scalable strategy to prevent
Pb leakage from perovskite devices.

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Thank You