Glutathione Modified Gold Nanoparticles for Sensitive Colorimetric Detection of Pb2+ Ions in Rainwater Polluted by Leaking Perovskite Solar Cells

In the past few years, the advent of lead halide perovskite solar cells (PSCs) has revolutionized the prospects of the third- generation photovoltaics and the reported power conversion efficiency (PCE) has been updated to 22%. Nevertheless, two main challenges, including the poisonous content of Pb and the vexing instability toward water, still lie between the lab-based PSCs technology and large scale commercialization. With this background, we first evaluated Pb2+ concentration from the rainwater samples polluted by three types of markets promising PSCs with inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry measurements (ICP-MS) as a case study. The influence of possible conditions (pH value and exposure time) on the contents of Pb2+ from the three PSCs was systematically compared and discussed. Furthermore, an optimized glutathione functionalized gold nanoparticles (GSH-AuNPs) colorimetric sensing assay was used to determine Pb2+ leaking from PSCs for the first time. The Pb2+-induced aggregation of sensing assay could be monitored via both naked eye and UV-vis spectroscopy with a detection limit of 15 and 13 nM, which are all lower than the maximum level in drinking water permitted by WHO. The quantitative detection results were compared and in good agreement with that of ICP-MS. The results indicate that the content of Pb2+ from three PSCs are in the same order of magnitude under various conditions. By the use of the prepared GSH-AuNPs self-assembled sensing assay, the fast and on-site detection of Pb2+ from PSCs can be realized.