Mechanistic model for inkjet printing and applications in perovskite solar cells engineering

Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) are the most exciting third-generation PV technology, which has shown an unprecedented increase in power conversion efficiencies from < 4% to > 25% in just over a decade. However, most of the research results indicating efficiencies of more than 20% are based on spin coating techniques with small cells with an active area < 20mm2. With efficiency already been on par with established silicon solar cells, there is a need to upscale the technology to production scale and parallelly work on other facets of the technology like stability and toxicity. Among such techniques for mass production of PSCs is well-established inkjet printing, which has been explored to achieve PSC printing and can be used with various substrates and solvents. However, there is not much effort in modelling the inkjet printing process and understanding the impacts of different decision variables related to the process. Here, this article presents a mechanistic model to achieve perovskite printing (or entire stack of layers) using this technique and analyzing the influence of solvent selection and process parameters on film characteristic.