Effects of some chemically treated clays on performance in perovskite solar cells

In this thesis, the use of some natural clay structures as scaffold layers in perovskite solar cells (PSCs), which have been the focus of many researchers in recent photovoltaic technologies and are on the verge of commercialization, and their effects on the performance of PSCs were investigated. As natural clay structures, sepiolite, montmorillonite and hallosite clays were used as scaffold layers. In addition to the clay-free PGH reference cell, sepiolite, which shed light on this study, was used as a clay-containing reference and these two references were compared with PGHs containing montmorillonite and hallosite. Acid, base and H2O2 treatment were used as chemical treatments. The aim here is to determine the optimum conditions by investigating the effects of clay structures, which are promising for PGHs, on cell performances as a result of chemical treatments. As a result of the studies, it was determined that some chemical treatments cause changes in the structures of clays and these changes cause different performance values in PGHs depending on the clay type. As a result, it was observed that the optimization of the selected clay structures with or without chemical treatment led to an increase in the efficiency of PGHs in some cases and these were discussed and presented with their reasons.