The curious case of Perovskite Solar Cells.
Part 1: Getting the feet wet.
Two years after my graduation thesis (titled Long-Term Stability of Scalable Perovskite Architecture) I look back at the phenomenon called Perovskite Solar cells (PSC for convenience). Through this article, I survey the landscape of PSCs and try to see if the challenges I knew (and faced) during my thesis duration are addressed, or not. I also attempt to demystify the science of it, the green side and the not-so green side.
First things first, what is a “Perovskite”?
A cursory Google search would give you the headlines: Perovskite is both a material (Calcium Titanium Oxide, CaTiO₃) and a class of chemical compounds which has a similar crystal structure as this material. This structure is denoted as ABX₃, and the molecule is cubic. The typical “cube” has the B element in the middle, the A element in the corner vertices, and the X in what is called “Face center”. You can see this following schematic for reference.
Perovskites are the hot topic of research in several fields outside of solar cells as well. For example, superconductivity, lasers, assisted…
