Rapid Processing of Low-Hysteresis Flexible Perovskite Solar Cells through Radiative Annealing

Solution processing of perovskite materials presents a scalable approach for high-throughput, roll-to-roll fabrication of lightweight and cost-effective flexible solar cells (f-PSCs). The final cost of f-PSCs is significantly influenced by material costs, fabrication speed, and energy consumption during material processing. Notably, the use of expensive organic charge transport layers, such as electron transport layers (ETLs) and hole transport layers (HTLs), substantially increases production costs. Moreover, conventional conductive and convective annealing methods are time-intensive, energy-consuming, and impractical for high-speed continuous manufacturing, further driving up fabrication costs. In this study, we demonstrate intense pulsed light (IPL) as a rapid, millisecond annealing method for f-PSCs on PET substrates, employing low-temperature-processable nickel oxide (NiO_x) and tin(IV) oxide (SnO₂) as cost-effective HTL and ETL materials. Flexible perovskite solar cells were fabricated via blade coating with IPL serving as the sole annealing step. By modifying room-temperature-deposited NiO_x with Me-4PACz, we achieved a power conversion efficiency (PCE) exceeding 17% for mixed cation perovskite composition (FA_0.86MA_0.14Pb(I_0.95Br_0.05)₃) on ITO-PET substrates, using metal oxide charge transport layers and IPL annealing exclusively.