Shedding light on the environmental impact of the decomposition of perovskite solar cell

Abstract

Abstract Perovskite materials, as the heart of perovskite solar cells, attracted great interest in the photovoltaic community since the efficiency of perovskite solar cells (PSC) dramatically increased to over 25%. However, the presence of Pb metal in the perovskite crystalline limits the progress of this new generation of solar cells from environmental aspects. Here, we have systematically investigated the impact of the decomposition of perovskite material on the a special plant, named Coleus. We found that the influence of the decomposition of a perovskite solar cell ( namely p-PbI2) has a three-fold lower destroying than commercial PbI2 which named s-PbI2 on the Coleus pant in the same condition. In particular, the p-PbI2 influenced on the roots and leaf slower and smoother than s-PbI2. Remarkably, the amount of water absorption with the plant′s root from p-PbI2 is two- fold lower than s-PbI2, indicating that s-PbI2 dramatically wasted water from roots and showing the most harmfulity. In following, the atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS) was measured the lead concentration of the Coleus plants ashe which indicated that the amount of Pb in first week was estimated about 3.2 and 2.1 ppm for synthetic PbI2 (s-PbI2), and decomposed perovskite (p-PbI2), respectively, which for two next weeks the amount of Pb were calculated about relatively close together and finally in the last week decreased to 1.8 ppm for s-PbI2 and increased to 2.4 ppm for p-PbI2. Therefore, we conclude that the Coleus plant absorbed more Pb metal from s-PbI2 than p-PbI2 of a PSC, which is in contrast with recent report in Nature Communication′s paper, as will explain in the following sections. This paper opens new avenues and challenges about the actual scenario on the impact of perovskite materials in PSCs on the plant and live metabolisms.