In Quest of Environmentally Stable Perovskite Solar Cells: A Perspective

Inorganic-organic halide perovskites pose a once-in-a-generation opportunity to revolutionize photovoltaic technology as they are excellent semiconductor candidates with a combination of many desirable attributes. Specifically, halide perovskite solar cells with extremely high device efficiency are easily fabricated and present great promise for commercialization in the near future. However, their non-ideal environmental stability under real operating conditions can limit their further development. Both the academic and industrial research communities have been devoting considerable effort to overcome this critical deficiency through material and device engineering. Significant progress has been reported in this direction, and in this perspective, we review the recent strategies that promise to improve solar cell stability focusing on two interwoven topics. The first one is the development of environmentally stable semiconductor materials, while the second one is dedicated to the reported progress in improving solar cell device stability. Although, the currently adopted methods have not resolved the above problems, yet they build a foundation of principles for future advances to overcome them. In this regard, we believe commercial perovskite-related photovoltaics might indeed be on the horizon, not only replacing the currently commercially available ones, but also improving them.