ISOS PROTOCOLS FOR STABILITY ANALYSES OF PEROVSKITE SOLAR CELLS

Perovskite Solar Cells (PSCs) are among the most promising innovative photovoltaics. PSCs could offer an alternative or refinement opportunity to conventional solar cells. However, the long-term stability of these devices is still under debate. Long-term stability is often overlooked when it comes to grabbing headlines and drumming up investment hypes on emerging solar cells. It should be clear that addressing intrinsic stability problems of a new PV technology reduces the risk of false investments and avoids hypes purely dictated by the high PCE promises. Early-stage stability analyses on laboratory-scale solar cells are essential for developing emerging photovoltaics and speeding up the transition from lab to fab.

The existing qualification tests of the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) were developed to address the field performance of silicon panels. Emerging PV technologies, like PSCs, require tests tailored to their characteristics. To standardize the stability analyses for Organic Solar Cells (OSCs), a series of stressing protocols were grouped into the International Summit on Organic PV stability (ISOS). [Ree11] Likewise, it has been proposed to address the mechanisms that affect the operational stability of PSCs with protocols adapted to this specific technology.

How do we perform aging experiments that are tailored to emerging PVs? A recent Nature Energy Paper [KHEN20] published by some of the most renowned researchers on PSCs provides crucial guidelines, which will be summarized here.

This blog post provides a quick guide to understand the difference between the different ISOS protocols for the analysis of Organic and Perovskite solar cells.

Standard ISOS Stability Protocols

The ISOS protocols can be defined through the combination of four stress factors and their variations as follows:

• light exposure (visible and UV): dark or 1-sun equivalent;

• temperature: ambient, 65°C or 85°C;

• ambient contaminants: inert, ambient, controlled humidity;

• electrical bias: open circuit (OC), MPP tracking or fixed voltage (positive or negative).

The ISOS tests can be applied to single solar cells, to neat materials, incomplete solar cell stacks, or mini-modules. The main goal is to guarantee results comparability of lab-scale devices among different laboratories. Unlike IEC, the ISOS protocols are not meant to be a standard qualification test and cannot be failed, but the results will improve understanding about the failure modes of the solar cell device under test. The ISOS protocols can be divided into 5 main testing groups, each focusing on a different stressor:

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●        ISOS-D: dark-storage/shelf-life

●        ISOS-L: light-soaking

●        ISOS-O: outdoor testing

●        ISOS-T: thermal cycling

●        ISOS-LT: light-humidity-thermal cycling

Each group is further divided into three levels with increasing control of the testing parameters and it is a step-up in complexity and sophistication of the required laboratory infrastructure. For instance, a sample can be simply stored in the dark with no control on other parameters or stored in the dark at a specific temperature and humidity (Table 1, from ISOS-D