Speaker: Saba Sharikadze, ECpE Graduate Student
Advisor: Vikram Dalal
Title: Cesium based all Inorganic Perovskite Solar Cells
Abstract: Perovskite solar cells have shown considerable amount of promise in the last ten years. Their efficiencies have improved at a dramatic rate surpassing some of the top PV materials such as CdTe and CIGS (copper indium gallium selenide) and caught up with that of silicon. At the same time simple and inexpensive growth methods possess immense potential for perovskites to become low-cost alternative to the presently available PV technologies. However the organic-inorganic perovskites still face some of the fundamental barriers to their commercialization such as their instability against heat and moisture, ion migration (hysteresis) causing device degradation and presence of lead – one of the most toxic chemical elements. In our studies we propose the use of all inorganic perovskite material by substituting organic MA (methylammonium) and FA (formamidium) ions with inorganic Cs and then by substituting iodine ions with bromine ions we manage to make our perovskite very stable against both heat and moisture with low hysteresis effects. Furthermore our studies attempt to eliminate lead by using non-toxic element such as tin. All the perovskite fabrication is done by vacuum evaporation instead of solutions processing – making the whole process scalable as well.
Bio: Saba Sharikadze received his B.S. degree in Physics from Free University of Tbilisi, Tbilisi, Georgia in 2015 and his M.S. degree in Condensed Matter Physics from Iowa State University in 2018. He is currently pursuing his PhD degree in Electrical Engineering at Iowa State University with the research focus in Microelectronics and Semiconductor Device Physics. His more specific research interests include perovskite solar cells (fabrication and characterization) as well as characterization of semiconductor thin films.