Full Life-Cycle Lead Management and Recycling Transparent Conductors for Low-Cost Perovskite Solar Cell

Realizing a full life-cycle management for toxic lead (Pb) and reducing material/manufacture cost are the key steps in determining the commercialization process of perovskite photovoltaics. In this work, we develop full lifecycle material management for a carbon-based perovskite solar cell (C-PSC) to immobilize and recover Pb against environmental pollution, followed by refabrication of C-PSC based on recovered materials and recycled transparent conductors from obsolete devices. Pb immobilization is first achieved by a strong coordination interaction between undercoordinated Pb ions from perovskite and a C═O bond from green pseudohalide ions (pseudo-X), and the resulting C-PSC with the structure of ITO/SnO₂/pseudo-X-perovskite/carbon yields an efficiency of 16.63%. Pb from an end-of-life C-PSC is then recovered by dissolving the obsolete perovskite layer into DMF/DMSO precursor solvent, followed by replenishing a certain amount of MAI to guarantee new perovskite layer formation. The refabricated C-PSC based on recovered perovskite and a recycled transparent conductor displays comparable efficiency (15.30%) to that of C-PSC with commercial raw materials, also exceeding the previous efficiency record for C-PSCs based on recycled materials. Such refabricated C-PSC is relatively low-cost.