Abstract

The organo-metallic photovoltaic perovskites are making a breakthrough in light to electricity conversion efficiency to that extent that their commercialization is imminent.  However, there is still a hidden parameter which concerns the health hazards related to their production, transportation and break-down of the installed photovoltaic devices in our environment. This needs to be addressed by in vivo toxicity studies and life cycle assessment. We hereby show for the two most studied photovoltaic perovskites, CN3NH3PbI3 and CN3NH3SnI3 their impact on the life span, development and fertility of Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans), a model organism in toxicology. We highlight the novelty of our method which is based on microfluidic device allowing a rapid and accurate monitoring of the assay in many replicates, for various concentrations at the same time, and analyzing the faith of C. elegans by video-recorded images. Given the increased frequency at which application-oriented novel compounds emerge every year, this quick and high-throughput method is badly needed for toxicity studies of new compounds before their industrial production