Evaluating the Circular-Economy Gains of Remanufactured Perovskite Solar Cells via A Dynamic Sustainability-Benefit Ratio

Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) offer high power-conversion efficiencies and low-temperature, solution-based fabrication, but their short operational lifetime and lead-containing layers raise environmental and economic concerns. These issues cannot be resolved under a linear “make-use-dispose” paradigm. Because perovskite layers can be both deposited and removed via solution processing, reusing the substrate and supporting platform opens a promising pathway toward circular operation. However, a unified metric that integrates environmental and economic performance of such reuse remains lacking. This study investigates whether periodic remanufacturing can enhance circularity in PSCs and introduces a dynamic Sustainability-Benefit Ratio (SBR) to quantify its combined benefits. Life-cycle boundaries are cradle-to-cradle: manufacturing, one midlife remanufacture or full replacement, and end-of-life processing. Developed to quantify both environmental and economic sustainability within a single framework, SBR is defined as the ratio of cumulative environmental benefit to cumulative environmental cost. The numerator accounts for avoided CO2 emissions from electricity generation, as well as material and end-of-life credits. Meanwhile, the denominator includes embodied emissions and monetized costs, with all terms expressed in CO2-equivalent units using an economic CO2 intensity factor. This enables all components to be expressed in a unified CO2-equivalent unit, thereby integrating both environmental and economic aspects into a single evaluation framework. Application to PSCs shows that periodic remanufacturing increases the steady-state SBR by 12.5% and reduces the levelized cost of electricity by 31.9%. Equivalent circular value is achieved with lifetimes about 38% shorter than those required in a renew-only scenario, highlighting improved resource efficiency and design flexibility. Finally, benchmarking against other renewable technologies reveals that remanufactured PSCs have the potential to outperform mature systems such as silicon photovoltaics. These findings highlight the value of incorporating remanufacturing at the design stage and establish SBR as a practical, interpretable tool for assessing circularity in emerging technologies beyond PSCs.