Circular management of perovskite solar cells using green solvents: from recycling and reuse of critical components to life cycle assessment

Abstract

Environmental needs and international regulations urgently ask for a robust practice for the recycling and reusing of critical components of perovskite solar cells (PSCs) to reduce the primary material demand and energy consumption. This work demonstrates a circular approach based on green solvents to refurbish critical materials of PSCs, i.e. SnO₂-coated indium tin oxide substrates, PbI₂ and Spiro-OMeTAD. Using such recovered materials (and purifying the employed solvents) we fabricate PSCs in an iterative way keeping 98.4% of the initial average efficiency. This comes from an efficient re-utilization of single components, as rationalized by investigating interfaces and device properties upon each recycling step. Concomitantly, we compare the proposed recovery strategy with the conventional landfill treatment for PSCs and silicon photovoltaics through a comparative life cycle assessment (LCA). LCA results reveal that the recovery scenario is preferable to landfilling in reducing energy requirements and environmental footprint.