Life Cycle Environmental Impacts of Precursors Used in the Supply Chain of Emerging Perovskite Solar Cells

This paper presents estimations for life cycle energy demand, human toxicity, and climate change of industrial-scale production of A-site cation precursor chemicals that may be used in production of perovskite solar cells. We employed process scale-up concepts, updated data sources and industry-relevant process modelling assumptions to build commercially relevant life cycle inventories (LCIs) for each of the perovskite precursors. Life cycle assessment (LCA) was applied to characterize and compare the resulting life cycle impacts and comparisons were made with other module components. The main finding of this work is that precursor impacts are similar to each other and about 1,000 times less than solar glass. Therefore, selection of perovskite compositions for commercialization should be driven solely by efficiency and stability rather than environmental concerns.