Perovskite-Info is a news hub and knowledge center born out of keen interest in the wide range of perovskite materials.
Perovskites are a class of materials that share a similar structure, which display a myriad of exciting properties like superconductivity, magnetoresistance and more. These easily synthesized materials are considered the future of solar cells, as their distinctive structure makes them perfect for enabling low-cost, efficient photovoltaics. They are also predicted to play a role in next-gen electric vehicle batteries, sensors, lasers and much more.
Researchers at the New York University (NYU) have designed a perovskite solar cell using a doping technique based on carbon dioxide (CO2) instead of the commonly used oxygen doping approach.
The scientists described the common oxygen-based p-type doping process as one of the major hurdles to remove to bring perovskite closer to commercial production, as the technique is particularly time consuming and often requires hours to spread oxygen into a hole transporting layer of a perovskite cell.
Researchers from CHOSE (Centre for Hybrid and Organic Solar Energy) – University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, Fraunhofer ISE and ISM-CNR have developed a full semiautomatic scalable process based on the blade-coating technique, to fabricate perovskite solar modules in ambient conditions.
An efficient and stable triple-cation cesium methylammonium formamidinium (CsMAFA) perovskite is deposited in ambient air with a two-step blading process, for the first time, by air and green anti-solvent quenching. The developed industry-compatible coating process enables the fabrication of several highly reproducible small-area cells on module size substrate with an efficiency exceeding 17% and with high reproducibility.
A team of researchers from Lund University (Sweden), the Russian Academy of Science (Russia) and the Technical University of Dresden (Germany) has developed a new methodology for the study of lead halide perovskites, based on the complete mapping of the photoluminescence quantum yield and decay dynamics in the two-dimensional (2D) space of both fluence and frequency of the excitation light pulse.
Such 2D maps not only offer a complete representation of the sample's photophysics, but also allow to examine the validity of theories, by applying a single set of theoretical equations and parameters to the entire data set.
Understanding the charge mobility of lead-halide perovskite materials is crucial for their use in photovoltaic applications. Using X-ray spectroscopic techniques, the structural deformations affecting the charge mobility, which plays a central role in solar energy conversion, have been identified and quantified by an international team of scientists led by Giulia Mancini (at the University of Pavia) and M. Chergui at EPFL.
Lead-halide perovskites' use in photovoltaic applications relies on the generation of charges (electrons and hole) upon absorption of light. These charges migrate through the material to generate an electrical current. One of the crucial physical properties in this respect is the so-called charge mobility. Despite their remarkable performances in light-to-electricity conversion, a limitation of perovskites is their charge mobilities, which are orders of magnitude smaller than those of conventional semi-conductors used in photovoltaics.
An international team of scientists from ICN2, EPFL, Eindhoven University of Technology, University of Cambridge, Max-Planck Institute for polymer Research and several other institutions have fabricated perovskite solar cells which retained almost all of their initial 21% efficiency after 1,000 hours under continuous operation at their maximum power point.
The researchers attribute this performance to an additive that ‘blocked’ ions that cause device degradation, 3-phosphono propionic acid (H3pp), which served to greatly improve device stability with no observable effects on its solar performance. The team hopes this new work will contribute to an improved understanding of the relationship between efficiency and stability in perovskite PV.
Renewables investor Magnora AG recently announced that it will increase its investment in perovskite solar developer Evolar, taking a 40.7% stake in the company.
Mats Ljunggren, Evolar’s chief executive, said the company’s next-generation solar cells have “Much higher efficiency for about the same per-watt manufacturing cost” as traditional technologies.
Scientists from Pennsylvania State University, Shaanxi Normal University, Hubei University and the US Army Combat Capabilities Development Command have designed a semi-transparent perovskite solar cell that reached 19.8%, and 28.3% in a tandem cell stacked on top of a silicon-heterojunction device. The device is based on a film of gold just a few atoms thick, grown using an innovative seeding method, which is both highly conductive and transparent.
The team investigated, in their new study, a new method to grow a very thin, continuous layer of gold onto a perovskite solar cell as the top electrode layer. Despite the fact that gold is a rare and expensive material, the group is convinced its approach offers an alternate, efficient route to fabricating perovskite and tandem solar cells.