Recent Perovskite News - Page 2

GCL Perovskite has signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Wuhan Lingyun Building Decoration Engineering, covering perovskite building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) curtain walls and PV windows. The partnership spans joint R&D, product supply, EPC contracting, and market development.

Under the agreement, GCL Perovskite will contribute its gigawatt-scale production capabilities and BIPV product portfolio, while Wuhan Lingyun will bring its design, manufacturing, and construction expertise in architectural curtain walls. The two companies plan to jointly develop perovskite PV curtain wall and window products targeted at green-building applications, including low-carbon public buildings and ultra-low-energy buildings.

FAW's Hongqi brand has built what it calls the industry's first perovskite photovoltaic sunroof prototype, integrating the material directly onto curved automotive safety glass rather than using conventional crystalline silicon. Fitted to the Hongqi EHS7 electric SUV, marketed in China as the Hongqi Tiangong 08, the sunroof can generate up to 300 W of power under strong sunlight and around 400 kWh over a year. The technology remains at the prototype stage, with no mass-production timeline disclosed.

Hongqi EHS7, which is marketed in China with the name Tiangong 08. Photo: CarNewsChina

The EHS7/Tiangong 08 is a five-passenger SUV measuring 4,925 mm long, 1,950 mm wide, and 1,680 mm tall, with 253 kW (339 hp) of peak power and a WLTP-rated range of 475 km. Hongqi said it passed over crystalline silicon for the sunroof because the material is fragile and offers lower efficiency for the application, choosing perovskite instead for its light weight, thinness, flexibility, high light-to-electricity conversion efficiency, tunable coloring, and lower cost. Integration wasn't without difficulty: perovskite's known vulnerability to water, oxygen, and ultraviolet exposure, combined with the curved geometry of the sunroof glass, reportedly posed challenges for the development team.

Time is running out to save on your place at Perovskite Connect 2026, taking place in Berlin on 21-22 October 2026 - discounted registration rates end on Saturday, 12 September 2026.

Book before the deadline and save up to €350 on a single ticket, or up to €1,500 on group packages. From 13 September, standard rates apply.

Researchers at the University of Freiburg's Early-Career Research Group on Optoelectronic Thin-Film Materials (INATECH) and the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (Fraunhofer ISE), together with Martin Luther University Halle, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, and the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), have fabricated what is described as 'the world's first perovskite-silicon tandem solar cell manufactured entirely without solvents'. 

The device reached a champion power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 27.3%, stabilized at 27.0%, and retained 97.06% of its initial efficiency after 6,800 hours of dark storage in a nitrogen atmosphere.

The U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation has announced a $12 million funding opportunity to accelerate technical innovation and expand domestic manufacturing for space-grade solar panels, through the Space Photovoltaics (PV) Research and Development Partnership Intermediary Agreement (PIA). While the program covers space PV broadly, both of its topic areas specifically call for perovskite-based projects, according to program representatives.

“The next frontier for solar PV power generation is in space,” said Assistant Secretary of Energy Audrey Robertson. “As demand for space-grade PV skyrockets, this investment will establish American leadership in next-generation, space-based PV, bolster our national security, and enhance our economic competitiveness.”

Perovskite Connect 2026 is set to be the industry's premier event, taking place on 21-22 October 2026 in Berlin, with a world-class agenda, exhibition and networking opportunities. Co-located with the Future of Electronics RESHAPED, Perovskite Connect will focus on the perovskite supply chain, solar applications, recent innovations, materials and processes.

In this article we will introduce some of our speakers and themes at the event. You can explore the full agenda and event details here.

Researchers at Ajou University's Department of Molecular Science and Technology, working with co-first author Chanhyeok Kim of POSTECH's Department of Chemical Engineering, have engineered two dopant-free derivatives of PTAA, a widely used hole transport layer (HTL) polymer for inverted perovskite solar cells, by copolymerizing carbazole units into its backbone. The carboxylic-acid-terminated version, CA-PTAA, reached a power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 22.8%, up from 20.0% for undoped PTAA, while retaining long-term ambient stability comparable to standard PTAA despite a more hydrophilic surface.

In inverted (p-i-n) perovskite solar cells, the HTL sits at the bottom contact and shapes both charge extraction and the growth of the perovskite film above it. PTAA is a favored choice for its chemical stability, energy-level alignment, and solution processability, but it has two persistent limitations. Its intrinsic conductivity is low enough that high-performing devices typically rely on p-doping, and because most molecular dopants aren't covalently bound to the polymer backbone, they can diffuse or be washed out by the polar solvents used in perovskite precursor solutions, introducing mobile ionic species and compositional inhomogeneity that hurt reproducibility and stability. Separately, PTAA's surface is chemically inert and hydrophobic, which causes poor wetting of the perovskite precursor and provides no chemical anchor points for the growing film, leading to smaller grains, interfacial voids, and higher defect densities that cap the achievable open-circuit voltage.

The University of Sydney has been awarded AU$7.25 million (approximately US$5.18 million) by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) to accelerate the commercialization of perovskite-silicon tandem solar cell technology.

The funding was awarded to Professor Anita Ho-Baillie, the University's inaugural John Hooke Chair of Nanoscience, who is partnering with Australian solar panel manufacturer Unison Solar Energy to take the technology closer to commercial viability.

Researchers at Gyeongsang National University in South Korea, working with battery materials company Energy 11 Co., the Korea Basic Science Institute, Jeonbuk National University, and Xi'an University of Technology in China, have developed a dual-site-doped perovskite oxide separator coating that addresses the polysulfide "shuttle effect" limiting lithium-sulfur (Li-S) battery performance. Cells built with the modified separator held stable cycling over 500 cycles at a 2C rate, with a capacity decay rate of just 0.04% per cycle, and the team also validated the approach in pouch-cell format rather than coin cells alone.

Li-S batteries are attractive for their high theoretical energy density (2,600 Wh/kg) and specific capacity (1,675 mAh/g), along with low cost and environmental friendliness, but commercialization has been held back by sluggish reaction kinetics, the poor electronic conductivity of sulfur and Li₂S, and above all the shuttle effect: soluble polysulfide intermediates that dissolve into the electrolyte during cycling and migrate between electrodes, degrading capacity and cycling stability. Researchers have tried a range of inorganic catalysts, including metal oxides, nitrides, and carbides, to accelerate polysulfide conversion, but single-component catalysts tend to offer a limited number of active sites and little independent control over adsorption versus catalytic activity.

A team at the Korea Institute of Energy Research (KIER), led by Hong Seong-jun of its Solar Energy Research Laboratory, working with Park Young-seok's group at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) and Lee Kyung-gu's group at Kunsan National University, has developed a "dual-molecule passivation" technique that lifts the power conversion efficiency of inverted perovskite solar cells to 24.6%, more than 3 percentage points above an untreated control cell's 21.21%.

The inverted architecture in PSCs, in which the electrode arrangement is reversed relative to the conventional cell design, is particularly well suited to large-area and flexible cells because it allows for low-temperature processing. The persistent obstacle is microscopic defects that form at grain boundaries and on the surface during thin-film fabrication; these trap and scatter electrons and holes as they move through the material, cutting into both efficiency and long-term stability. Conventional passivation coats the perovskite surface with a single type of molecule, which struggles to address the deep grain-boundary defects and the surface defects at the same time.