Scalable Deposition Methods for Large-Area Production of Perovskite Thin Films

The recent steady improvements in the performance of the nascent hybrid perovskite photovoltaic(PV) devices have led to power conversion efficiencies that rival the best-performing established PV technologies.However, to scale these laboratory demonstrations to PV module-scale production will require development of scalable deposition methods for perovskite thin films. Every record result for perovskite PVs so far was achieved via spin coating, a technique that is popular in research laboratories for thin-film coating over relatively small device areas, but not considered to be a method that could be used to scale up the manufacturing of perovskite PVs. Significantly larger thin-film areas are needed for future commercial PV products. Hence, some researchers have focused their efforts on perovskite deposition techniques that can be considered as scalable for mass production and have achieved notable results even on large areas. Here, we present an overview of the solution-based and vapor-based deposition processes; we explain their influence on the molecular crystal growth behavior of perovskite thin films and discuss the morphology as well as other material quality characteristics. By presenting a comprehensive comparison of the deposition techniques and the corresponding performance parameters for different device sizes, we intent to guide the growing research community through the methods that might enable mass production of perovskite solar products.