Plenary Lecture

Perovskites: Novel Materials for Stable and High-Efficiency Solar Cells

Dr. Antonio Abate
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)
Institut des sciences et ingénierie chimiques
Switzerland
E-mail: antonio.abate@epfl.ch

Abstract: Organic-inorganic perovskites, such as CH3NH3 Pb X3 (X = I- or Br-), are quickly leading to research activities in new materials for cost-effective and high-efficiency photovoltaic technologies. Since the first demonstration from Kojima and co-workers in 2009, several perovskite-based solar cells have been reported and certified with rapidly improving power conversion efficiency. Recent reports demonstrate that perovskites can compete with the most efficient inorganic materials, while they still allow processing from solution as potential advantage to deliver a cost-effective solar technology. I will discuss the most recent advances to prepare stable and high-efficiency perovskite solar cells. The current most efficient perovskite solar cells employ small molecule or polymeric organic semiconductors as hole transporting layer within the device architecture. I will show that the hole transporter has a strong impact on the device lifetime and I will report new organic semiconductors that allow to prepare more stable and high-efficiency perovskite solar cells. Then, I will show that electronic trap states at the organic-inorganic interface between the perovskite crystal surface and the hole transporting layer generate charge accumulation and consequent recombination losses. I will demonstrate that under-coordinated iodine ions within the perovskite structure are responsible and make use of supramolecular halogen bond complexation to successfully passivate these sites and thus improve the power conversion efficiency.

Brief Biography of the Speaker: I am currently a Marie Curie Research Fellow at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and I am acting as Research Group Leader at Adolphe Merkle Institute, University of Fribourg in Switzerland. After completing my PhD training at Politecnico di Milano in Italy, I spent 4 years as Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. My research interests are in hybrid organic-inorganic materials for optoelectronics.

Bulletin Board

Currently:

The Conference Program is online.

The Conference Guide is online.

The paper submission deadline has expired. Please choose a future conference to submit your paper.


Plenary Speakers

WSEAS Main Site

Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement