Comparative life cycle assessment of different fabrication processes for perovskite solar mini-modules

Abstract

Sustainable energy production is one of the major goals for society to address climate change, with the aim of reducing fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gases emissions. One of the main alternatives to burning fossil fuels is solar energy conversion; therefore, scientific research has moved towards the development of photovoltaic devices that are able to harvest solar radiation and convert it into electric energy, such as perovskite solar cells (PSCs). Several production processes for PSCs exist, differing in the deposition technique of PSCs layers as well as energy and material consumption. One of the main challenges is then to minimize the environmental impact of PSC manufacturing, which can be assessed through Life Cycle Assessment. The aim of this work is to evaluate and compare the eco-profiles of four different PSC production line at mini-module scale, namely, Spin Coating, Blade Coating, Spin Coating + Press and Blade Coating in Glovebox. Results disfavour the latter manufacturing route, showing that its burden is higher than the alternatives. Differently, the Blade Coating process results to be the one having the lowest environmental impact among the proposed solutions, whereas Spin Coating and Spin Coating + Press lines show almost the similar intermediate result.