A COMPREHENSIVE REVIEW OF PHOTOVOLTAIC DEVICES BASED ON PEROVSKITES

Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) though in its development stage, has been of interest to Scientists receiving considerable attention in recent years as a promising material capable of developing high performance photovoltaic devices at low cost. Owing to their solution processability, broad spectrum solar absorption, low non-radiative recombination losses, etc., PSCs provide numerous advantages over most thin film absorber materials. Due to the substantial improvement of Power Conversion Efficiency (PCE) of these materials, photovoltaic efficiency has reached prestigious position (approx. 20.1 %) within the last 5 years. In this review article, we discuss the current state of the Art for photovoltaic devices based on Perovskites, highlighting the underlying phenomenon, synthesis, challenges, comparison to other technologies and future outlook. We emphasized the importance of Perovskite film formation and qualities in achieving highly efficient photovoltaic devices. The flexibility and simplicity of Perovskite fabrication methods allows the use of mesoporous and planar device architectures. A variety of processing techniques are currently employed to form the highest quality CH3NH3PbX3 films resulting to high performance PSC devices which include stoichiometry, thermal annealing, solvent engineering, additives and environmental control. In this review, we outlined and discussed the challenges of PSCs including its stability issues, hysteresis effects, and ion migration effects. Possible ways overcoming these challenges and improvement on the stability of PSCs so far were also addressed