However, a recent report by an international consortium of academic and industrial partners led by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory(NREL) in the United States and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany has cautioned that the pathway to the widespread commercialization of perovskite PV remains uncertain. One potential reason is the differing fabrication technologies used by labs and those used by manufacturers.
Solution-based methods are commonly used in research settings due to their cost effectiveness and rapid-optimization capabilities. These approaches involve the use of inks containing organic and inorganic salts that are dissolved in a solvent. These inks can be deposited on the substrate surface using various printing techniques. This simple and easy fabrication technique has helped fuel the rapid advancement of perovskite photovoltaics in the early days of their development, says Ulrich Wilhelm Paetzold, a professor at KIT.
While this fabrication technique has helped advance the technology in labs, manufacturers employ different production techniques collectively known as vapor-based deposition processes. Vapor-based deposition is dominant in established thin-film manufacturing for photovoltaics or organic light-emitting diodes. While vapor-based deposition techniques can be better controlled, reproduced, and scaled than solution-based techniques, they are less explored in research literature.
