Radiation Hardness, a New Characterization Technique and Bistability Regarding Methylammonium Containing Perovskite Solar Cells

It is shown, that conventional CH₃NH₃PbI₃ based perovskite solar cells, in the reported case with an initial efficiency of about 12%, show almost no degradation, when irradiated with 68 MeV protons for doses of up to 10¹² protons cm⁻². The 15% degradation, observed for a dose of 10¹³ protons cm⁻², mainly due to a decrease of the short circuit current, is to a large amount only caused by the glass substrate coloring. Other solar cell parameters, like the fill factor and the open circuit voltage are not at all degrading even after this high radiation dose exposure. All solar cell parameters have also been monitored continuously in-situ during the exposure of the devices to proton irradiation and the results have been compared to conventional silicon photodiode degradation, confirming the much better stability under irradiation of the perovskite solar cells. Furthermore two other research activities, regarding perovskite related research at Salerno University are highlighted: By the characterization of perovskite solar cells with a new technique, based on the measurement of the temperature dependence of the low-frequency electrical noise spectra, the electronic defect structure and the solar cell efficiency could be clearly correlated. In another research, utilizing the long-term reproducibility of the hysteretic behavior of conventional perovskite solar cells, the realization of a Resistor Random Access Memory (ReRAM) for data storage has been demonstrated and a possible underlying physical mechanism has been proposed.