Demas Aji, Manopat Depijan, Harit Chunlim, Akarapitch Siripraparat, Gerald Ensang Timuda, Pasit Pakawatpanurut

Energy has become the forefront issue for much of the economic and social development. The success of clean energy technology is clearly needed for our future sustainable society. Perovskite solar cell represents one of the most promising solar energy technologies due to its potentially low cost, ease of fabrication, good prospect of performance, and environmental benignity. Nevertheless, its photovoltaic performance still needs to be further improved in order to make this technology cost-effective, which eventually leads to viable commercialization. This work presents a new approach of fabrication of the perovskite layer that is different from the conventional spin coating method. The technique reported in this work is based on the electrodeposition of the precursor PbI2 film, enhanced using an external magnetic field during the electrodeposition. When polyvinyl alcohol was used as additive in such a process, the obtained perovskite layer revealed large crystal size and improved crystallinity, yielding highest photoconversion efficiency of 7.50% for unencapsulated, carbon-based device without the need of expensive hole transport layer. In addition, the obtained device also showed robust stability after 500 hours of storage under highly humid condition. Furthermore, because this method can be modified to support various sizes of substrates, the method also opens new opportunities for low-cost industrial upscaling of photovoltaics, which increases the prospect of wider applications. Such contributions are consistent with the affordable/clean energy and the climate action SDG goals.