Techno-Economic Analysis of Low-Dimensional Perovskite Solar Cells A Cradle-to-Gate Perspective

The integration of low-dimensional (LD) materials into perovskite solar cell (PSC) architecture has emerged as a strategy to enhance interfacial properties, mitigate degradation, and introduce functional tunability. This study presents a techno-economic analysis of LD-PSCs from a cradle-to-gate perspective, following ISO 15686-5:2017 and International Energy Agency’s Task12 report. Using 1 m<sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> as the functional unit, we evaluate five LD materials: graphene, reduced graphene oxide (rGO), graphene quantum dots (GQDs), molybdenum disulfide (MoS<inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</inf>), and black phosphorus (BP), across different PSC layers of two promising alternative architectures. Inventories are based on experimental synthesis routes, updated with industrial-scale prices. Results show how production costs of LD-materials are affected by raw material and processing requirements, with BP-based LDs, around $15 per gram, and Graphene-based LD-materials remain below $1.17 per gram. Total manufacturing costs of the enhanced LD-PSCs for the two alternatives range from $11.40 to $18.77 per m<sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup>, which is slightly higher than PSCs without LDs.