Search

Although perovskite solar cells have achieved extremely high performance in just a few years, their device stability and fabrication cost are still of great concern. For inverted p–i–n perovskite solar cells, the commonly used electron-transporting layers are C60 and PCBM, which have stability issues and are very expensive. Here, we report a novel and highly stable perovskite solar cell using an inorganic electron-transporting layer made of microwave-assisted solution-processed indium-doped zinc oxide (IZO) nanoparticles. With NiO as the hole-transporting layer, the perovskite solar cells with all-inorganic selective contacts demonstrate a decent power conversion efficiency of over 16%. More importantly, the IZO-based perovskite solar cells demonstrate impressive long-term stability under air or light-soaking conditions. With encapsulation, our device retained 85% of the initial power conversion efficiency after 460 hours of light soaking. This result reveals that good device performance, low fabrication cost and impressive light-soaking stability can be realized simultaneously by employing facile microwave-synthesized oxides (IZO and NiO in this work) as inorganic selective contacts.

To assist endodontic therapy, in this paper, a force sensor is designed and fabricated for measuring the axial force and the bending moment simultaneously. By detecting the bending moment, we can know the severity of bending. Axial force detection is also desired, as excessive axial forces may result in instrument buckling or even root canal perforation. This paper installs three sensing cells in each of two planes to detect the bending direction. Each sensing cell consists of a pressure-sensitive electric conductive rubber and an electrode. The size of the force sensor is 1.4-mm wide and 6-mm high for matching the size of endodontic instruments and making it feasible in the endodontic treatment. Experimental results on accuracy, repeatability, and nonlinearity are presented to validate the proposed sensor.

In this article, we apply indium zinc oxide (IZO) transparent conductive oxide film for the fabrication of bifacial-illuminated perovskite solar cells (PSCs) and two substrate type PSCs based on non-fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) and ultrathin substrates. The Si/perovskite tandem solar cell system employing bifacial-illuminated PSCs delivers a decent power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 19.51% with 1 cm2 active area. The investigation of PSCs without FTO substrate is further demonstrated using sputtered Ti metal as a substrate. The devices employing a Ti cathode coating on a slide and ultrathin glass could deliver 13.5% and 13.6% of PCE, respectively, revealing a promising application for cost-effective and light-weight non-FTO devices.