Publication date: 22nd July 2026
Perovskite Solar Cells (PSCs) have recently emerged as a highly promising alternative to conventional silicon photovoltaics. However, the toxicity and safety risks associated with the lead content of perovskites remain critical barriers to large-scale industrial mass production. Despite extensive research, entirely replacing lead without compromising power conversion efficiency (PCE) remains a severe challenge; consequently, minimizing the volume of the absorber layer presents a highly viable alternative strategy.[1]
In this work, we present an advanced wave-optical light-trapping (LT) architecture that enables cutting the lead content by half without compromising macroscopic device performance. This is achieved via the integration of front-contact nanophotonic voids that provide gradual effective refractive index matching at the air-cell interface, leading to broadband anti-reflection and intense forward light scattering into the underlying absorber film.[2] This electrically harmless LT scheme dramatically enhances short-wavelength photon absorption within thin (<200 nm) perovskite layers, yielding a substantial increase in short-circuit current density without introducing parasitic recombination or deteriorating other photovoltaic parameters.[3] The high-index nanophotonic features were fabricated using a highly scalable colloidal lithography technique, where key processing parameters (including microsphere diameter, reactive ion etching times, ITO thickness, and annealing profiles) were exhaustively optimized. The optimized nanostructured design produced a 20% increase in optical photocurrent density for a 200 nm thick perovskite cell, successfully matching the optoelectronic performance of a conventional, thick (400 nm) reference device.
Ultimately, this lead mitigation strategy provides a viable, post-process engineering path to circumvent toxicity regulations, acting as a crucial catalyst for the accelerated market deployment and commercialization of sustainable perovskite photovoltaics.
This work received funding from FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, I.P.) under the projects LA/P/0037/2020, UIDP/50025/2020 and UIDB/50025/2020 of the Associate Laboratory Institute of Nanostructures, Nanomodelling and Nanofabrication—i3N. The work was also supported by the project M-ECO2 - Industrial cluster for advanced biofuel production, Ref. C644930471-00000041, co-financed by PRR - Recovery and Resilience Plan of the European Union (Next Generation EU). CT and MJM acknowledge funding from the European Union via the projects SolarWay (HORIZON-MSCA-2023-PF-01, Grant No. 101148726), JUMP INTO SPACE (HORIZON-EIC-2023-PATHFINDERCHALLENGES-01, No. 101162377), X-STREAM (Horizon EU, ERC CoG, Grant No. 101124803). IS and EC acknowledge funding by FCT I.P., respectively through the grants 2023.03929.BD and 2024.02266.BD.
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