Chinese Researchers Develop Decoupled Co-Deposition for Flexible Solar Cells

People's Daily reports that Professor Li Yaowen's team at Soochow University proposed a novel development strategy called decoupled co-deposition, collaborating across university and enterprise sectors to mass-produce commercial-specification large-sized flexible photovoltaic devices that achieve a stable photoelectric conversion efficiency exceeding 20%. The international academic journal Science published the findings online on October 23, Beijing time. Li Yaowen explained that co-deposition serves as an essential step in manufacturing flexible perovskite photovoltaic films, during which perovskite precipitates from a precursor solution and adheres to a plastic substrate surface to form a continuous film. However, as the film surface area expands, the interfacial layer situated between the film and the plastic substrate develops uneven thickness issues. Paper co-corresponding author Professor Xu Guiying noted that the team investigated interfacial layer formation at the molecular level and discovered an exclusive competitive mechanism. When exposed to interfacial molecules and organic solvents in the precursor solution, hydroxyl groups on the plastic substrate bind partly with the organic solvent, leaving remaining interfacial molecules unable to anchor to the substrate surface. Over the past year, moving from small-sized laboratory verification units, Li Yaowen stated that the team collaborated with Suzhou Shangrou New Energy Co., Ltd. on pilot trials to mass-produce a batch of large-sized flexible photovoltaic devices featuring an effective area of 750 square centimeters, sustaining a stable photoelectric conversion efficiency exceeding 20%.

The team introduced a decoupled co-deposition approach by adding a decoupling agent that separates substrate hydroxyl groups from organic solvents and pairs them with interfacial molecules, allowing the interfacial layer to anchor firmly to the plastic substrate surface.