US-based Sofab Inks, a specialty materials developer for perovskite solar, has announced the completion of its $6 million seed funding round, led by UK-based deep tech investor Cloudberry Ventures, alongside what the company describes as a manufacturing reliability breakthrough for its fullerene-free electron transport material. 

Alongside the funding, Sofab says it has achieved a manufacturing reliability breakthrough, which it describes as solving "the single biggest obstacle standing between perovskite solar and mass-market adoption: reliability at scale." The company sees durability - rather than efficiency - as the remaining barrier to commercial deployment, and that the fullerene layer is where that problem originates.

If Perovskite Connect 2026 is on your calendar for this October, don't wait to register. Discounted pricing for the event ends on July 25, 2026 - after that, prices go up across the board!

Right now, a single-person package starts at just €700 (down from €950), or €850 with masterclasses included (down from €1200). Group packages deliver even bigger savings, scaling all the way up to a 10-person package at €3500 (down from €5000) - ideal for bringing your whole team. Separate registration paths are available for attendees based outside Germany and for German attendees, so be sure to pick the right one when you sign up.

Researchers from Soochow University, Chint New Energy Technology, Wuxi EliTe Solar, Monash University, Suzhou Maxwell Technologies, University of Oxford and Beijing Institute of Technology have demonstrated high-efficiency indium-free perovskite/silicon tandem solar cells enabled by reactive plasma deposited tin oxide (RPD-SnOx), addressing both performance and scalability challenges associated with conventional indium-based transparent conductive oxides.

Indium-based oxides are widely used as electrodes and recombination layers in tandem devices, but their deployment is constrained by the scarcity and cost of indium, as well as sputtering-induced damage to sensitive perovskite layers. To overcome these limitations, the team developed a low-damage reactive plasma deposition (RPD) process for tin oxide films. In this vacuum-based technique, oxygen plasma reacts with evaporated metal atoms to form a metal oxide film, while avoiding the high-energy ion bombardment typical of sputtering. This enables the deposition of dense and conductive oxide layers with minimal damage to underlying materials.

Fuzhou University researchers have developed a multifunctional ligand engineering strategy that enables efficient and stable near-infrared perovskite quantum-dot LEDs (NIR-PQLEDs) fabricated entirely under ambient air conditions.

Metal halide perovskite quantum dots (PQDs), particularly formamidinium lead iodide (FAPbI₃), are attractive for NIR emission above 750 nm due to their tunable bandgaps, high color purity, and solution processability. These properties make them promising for applications such as biomedical imaging, night vision, and optical communication. However, despite rapid efficiency improvements in recent years - reaching EQEs above 20% in optimized systems - high-performance NIR-PQLED fabrication still typically relies on inert environments due to the extreme air sensitivity of PQDs.

Sunic System has reportedly completed Building A, the first phase of its new production complex in Pyeongtaek Brain City, with the full site expected to quadruple its manufacturing capacity compared with its current headquarters once Building B is completed. The completed facilities include the Building A production plant, office building and ancillary structures. The Pyeongtaek production complex is being developed on a 22,628-square-meter site with a planned total floor area of 15,756 square meters.

The new facility will serve as a key manufacturing base to meet growing demand for vacuum deposition equipment for Generation 8.6 OLED, OLED on Silicon (OLEDoS) and next-generation perovskite applications. Construction of Building B is targeted for completion in October, after which the company plans to begin operations at the Pyeongtaek site.

Researchers from Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB), Kaunas University of Technology (KTU) in Lithuania, and additional partners have developed a non-fullerene electron transport material (ETM) built around a carborane core, reporting improved performance over the standard C60 layer in both single-junction perovskite cells and perovskite/silicon tandems. The material has been patented and is already commercially available.

C60 remains the default ETM in high-efficiency p-i-n perovskite single-junction and multi-junction devices, and nearly all published record-efficiency p-i-n perovskite/silicon tandems have used it. Its appeal lies in fast electron extraction from the absorber, high electron mobility, and compatibility with thermal evaporation, which allows thin, conformal layers to be deposited over large substrate areas. But it carries several drawbacks: substantial non-radiative recombination at the perovskite/C60 interface that caps open-circuit voltage (VOC), high material cost, mechanically weak interfaces prone to delamination, sensitivity to ambient oxygen, and high parasitic absorption - the last of which is especially costly in tandem architectures, where light enters through the ETM.

UtmoLight has reportedly completed a 172-day field test of its perovskite modules at the National Wind-Solar-Storage-Transmission Demonstration Base in Zhangjiakou, Hebei Province. The project was connected to the grid in January 2026 using the company's 2.81 m² perovskite modules rated at 450 W.

According to the company, the modules operated under varying irradiation and temperature conditions from winter through summer, maintaining stable power generation with an average performance ratio approaching 100% and no significant degradation. These results are said to be consistent with those previously observed in a separate test conducted at the Daqing base.

China's Ministry of Finance, General Administration of Customs and State Taxation Administration have jointly announced a differentiated battery consumption tax policy that fully exempts perovskite, tandem and gallium arsenide photovoltaic cells while phasing taxation back in for mature technologies. The policy will be implemented in stages beginning September 1, 2026, revising preferential rules that have stood for over a decade.

Perovskite, tandem and gallium arsenide cells are fully exempt from consumption tax until December 31, 2028, with the existing fuel cell exemption continued in parallel. Sodium-ion and solid-state batteries join the tax-free list for the same window. Eligibility carries a condition: products claiming a reduction or exemption must meet the corresponding national standards.

Qcells has become the first company to receive certifications from UL Standards & Engagement (UL) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) for its silicon-perovskite tandem solar technology. German technical advisory firm TÜV Rheinland verified that the technology meets the requirements of the IEC and UL 61215 standards - a set of benchmarks that assess the technical reliability and bankability of solar technologies, and which can be seen as obstacles to commercializing perovskite tandem products.

The tested cells and modules came from Qcells' pilot production line in Bitterfeld-Wolfen, Germany. The company stressed that the products were fabricated using exclusively mass-production processes for both cell and module manufacturing - suggesting the certified devices are representative of what a commercial line could produce rather than bespoke laboratory samples. The Bitterfeld-Wolfen site receives funding from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, the state of Saxony-Anhalt, and the European Union through the PEPPERONI project.

Researchers from Gdańsk University of Technology, National Taiwan University, Chang Gung University and Ming-Chi University of Technology have investigated the degradation mechanisms of semitransparent perovskite solar cells (PSCs) built in an inverted architecture, combining outdoor field testing with laboratory-accelerated aging and drift–diffusion modelling to learn which stressors actually drive performance loss.

Tracking the devices outdoors in Gdańsk under ISOS-O-3 conditions across two seasonal windows produced sharply different results. Averaged over four devices, the cells retained 84% of their initial PCE after 1150 hours in the summer season, but retained 77% after a much longer 3100 hours in the fall. The team set out to test whether these differing seasonal results stem from a shifting balance between light-driven and temperature-driven degradation, rather than a single dominant cause.