Researchers at the Dresden University of Technology (TUD) have announced the fabrication of a solar cell based on all-inorganic cesium-lead iodide (CsPbI₃) perovskite, which is also sometimes referred to as 'black perovskite'.

a) Schematic of the deposition procedure (b) device structure. Image from Advanced Energy Materials

TUD researcher Yana Vaynzof said that the choice of this specific material was motivated by the fact that it shows superior stability as compared to the commonly used organic-inorganic lead halide perovskites.

GCL Optoelectronic Materials and SC-Solar have signed a strategic cooperation agreement to jointly develop and promote tandem perovskite solar cells.

Under the agreement, both companies will be working closely together to develop the equipment and production line for tandem perovskite cells. They will share resources and find ways to complement each other's strengths with respect to process technology and fabrication equipment. GCL Optoelectronic Materials is a subsidiary of vertically integrated solar enterprise GCL. SC-Solar is a subsidiary of J.S. Machine, which develops packaging and manufacturing solutions for many industries.

Researchers at the University of Rome Tor Vergata's Centre for Hybrid and Organic Solar Energy (CHOSE), in collaboration with Poland-based Saule Technologies, have demonstrated a large-area flexible perovskite solar module with a fully scalable deposition technique.

The results show the optimization of PTTA and perovskite layer deposition by blade-coating, with the final fabrication of a flexible perovskite module with a PCE of 10.51% over 15.7 cm², showing outstanding light stability of FPSM with a T80′ of 730 h and a recovery efficiency in the dark showing a T80″ of 1560 h, the most stable in the literature reported so far.

A team of researchers from Monash University, Wuhan University of Technology, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Swinburne University of Technology and Central South University has revealed defects in a popular perovskite light absorber that impede solar cell performance. The researchers found a change in the nature and density of these 'intragrain planar defects' correlated with a change in solar cell performance.

The research team used the imaging and diffraction protocol developed at the Monash Centre for Electron Microscopy (MCEM) to study the crystal structure of a range of perovskite solar cell materials in their pristine state.

An international team of researchers, including ones from Brown University, EPFL, Dalian University of Technology and Shaanxi Normal University, has developed a flexible thin-film perovskite solar cell with an efficiency of 21.0%.

The perovskite layer for the cell, which has an “n-i-p” layout, was fabricated using a metal-halide capping layer placed on top of a three-dimensional metal-halide perovskite film. This design reportedly provides hermetically sealed encapsulation, which is traditionally difficult to achieve in flexible perovskite cells, and also enhances the photocarrier properties at the interface between the perovskite film and the hole transport layer (HTL).

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.