Manufacturing Cost Analysis of Single-Junction Perovskite Solar Cells

Abstract

Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have attracted widespread attention due to their low cost and high efficiency. So far, a variety of single-junction PSCs have been successfully developed and considered for commercialization, including normal PSCs (N-PSCs), inverted PSCs (I-PSCs), and carbon-based PSCs (C-PSCs) without hole transporter. Herein, the material cost, equipment depreciation cost, and energy consumption of these three types of PSCs (1 m²) in detail are analyzed. As indicated, the total fabrication cost of the N-PSCs ($86.49) and I-PSCs ($81.31) is very close, but is significantly reduced to $41.16 for the C-PSCs (49%–52% reduction) because carbon electrode is much cheaper than noble metal electrode and organic hole transporter. Besides, only a low-cost slot-die coating process with low energy consumption is needed for the deposition of carbon electrode, while the expensive physical vapor deposition and reactive plasma deposition processes with high energy consumption are needed for the deposition of the noble metal electrode and organic hole transporter.