PhoenixPV · A perovskite sustainable photovoltaic system based on device healing and recycling.

PhoenixPV aims to develop a sustainable, reparable photovoltaic system using metal halide perovskites (HaP). Climatic challenges require an urgent abrupt growth of carbon-free energy sources, which will unlikely be sustainable if it is solely based on present photovoltaic systems. Their limited reparability and recyclability threaten a mid-term e-waste problem that will damage the environment and menace their social implementation, restraining overall sustainability. While HaP solar cells have demonstrated performance matching the best commercial counterparts, their stability is compromised due to their ionic and chemically dynamic nature, which also leads to potentially hazardous by-products.Our approach will use these drawbacks in our favor. The chemically dynamic nature, rooted in a low formation energy and ionic properties, can be used as leverage to design intrinsic self-healing strategies and extrinsic post-synthetic treatments, reversing degradation defects and restoring initial performance. Concurrently, these properties will be used to capture the toxic by-products in case of operational accidents and design material separation methods for efficient and safe end-of-life recycling.PhoenixPV will elucidate the reversible and irreversible reactions using a high-throughput aging characterization system that enables the parallel evaluation of a large number of devices under independently controlled degradation stressors. Beyond conventional efficiency, the system will integrate in-operando characterization techniques such as impedance spectroscopy, to monitor device health and design the necessary healing actions.While current research aims to slow degradation routes, PhoenixPV seeks to reverse them, extending the effective lifetime of HaP solar cells, reducing associated waste, and establishing a sustainable photovoltaic system. This project holds the key to accelerating HaP commercialization through the design of innovative photovoltaic usage schemes.