Investigations of Fused Deposition Modeling for Perovskite Active Solar Cells

The advent of Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM; or 3D printing) has significantly changed the way many products are designed and built. It has even opened opportunities to fabricate new products on-site and on-demand. In addition, parallel efforts that introduce new materials into the FDM process have seen great advances as well. New additives have been demonstrably utilized to achieve thermal, electrical, and structural property improvements. This combination of fabrication flexibility and material additives make FDM an ideal candidate for investigation of perovskite materials in new solar cell efforts. In this work, we fabricate and characterize a perovskite-based solar cell polymer designed for the FDM fabrication processes. Perovskite solar cells have garnered major research interest since their discovery in 2009. Perovskites, specifically methylammonium lead iodide, offer beneficial properties to solar cell fabrication such as long minority charge carrier distance, high light absorption, and simple fabrication methods. Despite the great potential of these materials, however, stability remains an issue in solar cell utilization as the material degrades under ultraviolet light, exposure to oxygen and water, as well as increased temperatures. To mitigate degradation, different fabrication methods have been utilized. Additionally, multiple groups have utilized encapsulation methods post-fabrication and in situ solution processed integration of polymer materials into the solar cell to prevent degradation. In this paper, we leverage the unique ability of FDM to encapsulate perovskite materials and yield a MAPbI₃-PCL solar material as the active layer for solar cell use. In this manner, increased ability to resist UV light degradation and material stability from other environmental factors can be achieved. This study provides characterization of the material via multiple techniques like SEM (Scanning Electron Microscopy) and XRD (X-ray Diffraction) as well as absorbance, transmittance, and photocurrent response. Investigations of processing on perovskite degradation as well as initial solar simulated response are recorded. Unique aspects of the resulting material and process are noted including improved performance with increased operating temperature. Increased electron-hole pair generation is observed for 200 μm FDM-printed PCL film, achieving a 45% reduction in resistance under peak incident flux of 590 W/m2 with the addition of MAPbl₃. This work establishes insight into the use of FDM for full solar cell fabrication and points to the next steps of research and development in this growing field.