February 2017

On May 10-11, IdTechEx will host its annual Printed Electronics Europe event that will focus on the commercialization of printed, organic and flexible electronics. The Perovskite-Info team will visit this event, so if anyone wishes to schedule a meeting - now is a great time to do so!

This event (which according to IdTechEx is the largest event of its kind) includes a conference, an exhibition, a demonstration street showing a full range of interactive products and prototypes, an end-user forum, master classes and IdTechEx's early-stage Launchpad.

A collaboration between researchers at Stanford University and Arizona State University (ASU) resulted in a new perovskite-silicon tandem solar cell that converts sunlight to electricity with 23.6% efficiency. The team stated that work is being put into reaching 30% efficiency, and they believe that they "could be there within two years".

In the tandem cell created by Stanford and ASU, the top cell is composed of a perovskite compound and the bottom cell is made of silicon that is specifically tuned to capture infrared light. The perovskite and silicon cells boast efficiency of 15 and 21%, respectively. ASU provided the silicon bottom cell, while Stanford researchers fabricated the perovskite compound and subsequent cells. Throughout the yearlong collaboration, the ASU team also provided modeling support to design the tandem for maximum current generation, while the Stanford team characterized the tandem cells.

Researchers at the University of Toronto have developed a novel way to print perovskite solar cells easily and at a low cost. This breakthrough could lead to low-cost, printable perovskite solar panels capable of turning nearly any surface into a power generator.

Perovskite materials can be mixed into a liquid to form an ink, which allows them to be printed onto glass, plastic or other materials using a simple inkjet process. The common catch is, however, that in order to generate electricity, electrons excited by solar energy must be extracted from the crystals so they can flow through a circuit. That extraction happens in a special layer called the electron-selective layer, or ESL. The difficulty of manufacturing a good ESL has been one of the key challenges holding back the development of perovskite solar cell devices.

Researchers from Finland have shown that the perovskite KBNNO is able to turn sunlight, heat and movement into electricity - which could be useful for many energy sources and electronics, providing that work to make it more efficient is successful.

Various other minerals in the perovskite family have previously shown promise for generating different types of energy, but never at the same time like KBNNO. In this study, the researchers from the University of Oulu ran experiments using KBNNO that showed it was reasonably good at generating electricity from pressure and heat ' but not as good as other perovskites. However, they showed KBNNO could be modified to amplify these properties.

Dyesol has announced that it has been awarded a grant of 2.5 miilion AUD (almost $2 million USD) under the Cooperative Research Centre Projects (CRC-P) programme. The grant, administered by the Australian Department of Industry, is for an 18 month project titled, "Large Area Perovskite Photovoltaic Material Coating on Glass Substrate" and complements Dyesol's Major Area Demonstration (MAD) prototype development activities.

Dyesol will lead the project and other partners are CSR Building Products, and its subsidiary, CSR Viridian, and CSIRO. This activity aims to advance the goal of commercializing Perovskite Solar Cell (PSC) photovoltaic technology on glass substrates.

Researchers from Skoltech's Institute of Problems of Chemical Physics and Moscow State University have designed an inorganic perovskite solar batteries. The new devices reportedly exhibit very high efficiency in light conversion (10.5%).

The team said that: "our devices demonstrate tremendous efficiency and excellent repeatability of electric characteristics from sample to sample". "The obtained results demonstrate the high potential of inorganic complex halogenides which offers new opportunities for target design of photoactive materials for effective and stable perovskite solar batteries."

Researchers from the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have found that surface recombination limits the performance of polycrystalline perovskite solar cells. In such cells, the sunlight creates mobile electrons whose movement generates power, but upon encountering defects can slip into a non-productive process. Known as a recombination, this process reduces the efficiency of a solar cell.

The NREL team examined the surface recombination in lead iodide perovskites, and determined that recombination in other parts of a methylammonium perovskite film is less important than processes that are happening on the surface, both the top and bottom. The team explained that multiple sources of recombination exist, and that surfaces are often overlooked when paying attention to recombination in favor of grain boundaries and bulk defects.

The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) has collaborated with researchers at the University of Queensland in Australia, and Shandong University and Nanjing Tech Universities in China on research investigating the possible synergistic effects of a new perovskite cathode material for a low-temperature solid-oxide fuel cell (LT-SOFC) that demonstrates impressive and stable electrochemical performance below 500 °C.

Solid-oxide fuel cells (SOFC) convert the chemical energy in fuel into electricity directly by the oxidation of the fuel. These cells are considered to be highly efficient, exhibit long-term stability, produce low emissions, and are relatively low cost.