Phd position on Unravelling degradation pathways of thin-film perovskite modules

published date : Apr, 01^st 2023
Deadline date : Apr, 15^th 2023
Starting date : as soon as possible
Country : Belgium
Position : Phd Student

 

IMEC web site

 

PhD Position @ IMEC 

Unravelling degradation pathways of thin-film perovskite modules

Long live the perovskite module

 

Perovskite solar cell (PSC) research is flourishing in recent years. This technology is promising in terms of PV applications aside from traditional PV power plants. New products involve PV modules becoming part of facades, car roofs, IoT energy scavengers, wearables or even flexible substrates such as fabrics or plastic foils. With efficiencies that already equal mature technologies such as Silicon, CIGS and CdTe, PSC unlock the development of cheap multijunction solar cells with efficiencies higher than 30%. Moreover, perovskites deposition methods allow increased flexibility to shape the ending module to create alternative designs or shapes.

A successful jump to industrial production needs to pay attention to module upscaling and operational stability. Some of the deposition techniques used in small area devices are incompatible with large area production. Perovskite properties may differ when the deposition method used is changed into high throughput techniques. A thorough understanding of the long term operational behavior of PSC modules processed with such industry relevant techniques is key to gain credibility when targeting market introduction, in terms of material properties, ion mobility or formation of metastable states is needed to control its impact in the modules lifetime.

 

Your Tasks

A number of material characterization techniques (spectroscopic, imaging, ) will be available to gain insight in the material properties and potential loss mechanisms.

The devices will undergo reliability acceptance tests that will position them closer to integration in the industry. Since placing modules outdoors for monitorization is not a fast way to evaluate their performance, appropriate accelerated tests need to be designed. This will help to quantify the lifetime acceleration factor (AF) that relates the lifetime under a defined standard operating condition to the lifetime under elevated stress conditions. To efficiently design relevant accelerated tests, a thorough knowledge of the module failure modes is needed. The starting point will be mono stress tests (temperature, air exposure, etc) combined with imaging techniques to possibly identify degradation mechanisms. Industrially relevant combined acceleration tests described by IEC such as damp heat or thermal cycling will be applied and complemented with specifically designed tests. A comparison with outdoor testing will be done to establish the correlation accelerated/outdoor tests.

The project will be conducted in an interdisciplinary and multicultural team of highly skilled scientists and engineers that work towards the next generation of PV technology. The research will be developed in the newly built laboratories at EnergyVille, Genk, working in one of the world’s premier research centers in nanotechnology.