Dialkylamines Driven Two-Step Recovery of NiOx/ITO Substrates for High-Reproducibility Recycling of Perovskite Solar Cells

Because of the toxicity of water-soluble lead, the recycling of organic-inorganic lead-halides perovskite solar cells (PSCs) has attracted increasing attention. Here, we report a highly reliable two-step process to recycle cost-dominated indium-tin-oxide (ITO) substrates coated with NiOx and regenerate their based PSCs by function of dialkylamines. The champion recycled PSC can achieve 20% in conversion-efficiency, higher than 17.92% of the fresh one. MEW Strikingly, the regenerated devices can remain superior to the fresh ones in the first 7 of 10 recycles. The comprehensive X-ray photoelectronic spectroscopy analysis reveals that dipropylamine has a suitable interaction with NiOx surfaces by Ni-N coordination, enabling its effective interfacial passivation and template effect of high-quality growth of perovskites. That leads to the suppressed nonradiative recombination of both interfacial and bulk, and finally improves the device performances. The dialkylamines driven two-step recycling process offers a promising and highly reproducible strategy to recycle PSCs, especially the cost-dominated NiOx/ITO substrates.

Automated summary

This study introduces a highly reliable two-step process to recycle cost-dominated ITO substrates coated with NiOx for PSCs by using dialkylamines. The champion recycled PSC achieved a higher conversion efficiency than the fresh one, and the regenerated devices performed superior to the fresh ones in the first 7 out of 10 recycles, providing a promising strategy for the recycling of PSCs.