October 2021

Scientists at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and Northern Illinois University (NIU) have developed a way to prevent lead from escaping damaged perovskite solar cells. This could go a long way in addressing concerns about potential lead toxicity.

Image by NREL, from Phys.org

The light-absorbing layer in perovskite solar cells contains a small amount of lead. Simply encapsulating solar cells does not stop lead from leaking if the device is damaged. Instead, chemical absorption may hold the key. The researchers report being able to capture more than 99.9% of the leakage.

A collaborative research team that included scientists from the University of Queensland (UO), the University of Leeds, Université Paris-Saclay and University of Cambridge, has developed perovskite-based composite glass that is virtually unbreakable and delivers crystal clear image quality.

UQ's Dr. Jingwei Hou said the discovery was a huge step forward in perovskite nanocrystal technology as previously, researchers were only able to produce this technology in the atmosphere of a laboratory setting as lead-halide perovskites NCs are extremely sensitive to light, heat, air and water. However, Hou said that 'Our team of chemical engineers and material scientists has developed a process to wrap or bind the nanocrystals in porous glass. This process is key to stabilizing the materials, enhancing its efficiency and inhibits the toxic lead ions from leaching out from the materials.'

A research team at KTH Royal Institute of Technology has developed a synthetic alloy that increases perovskite cells' durability while preserving energy conversion performance.

'Perovskite usually dissolves immediately on contact with water,' says co-author James Gardner, a researcher at KTH. 'We have proven that our alloyed perovskite can survive for several minutes completely immersed in water, which is over a 100 times more stable than the perovskite alone. What's more, the solar cells that we have built from the material retain their efficiency for more than 100 days after they are manufactured.'

A research team from the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, NREL, Solaronix SA and the Materials Research Center of the University of Freiburg has reported perovskite solar cells with carbon-based electrodes, which demonstrate impressive resilience against reverse-bias-induced degradation.

Previous studies have shown that a negative voltage applied to conventional perovskite solar cell stacks resulted in breakdown and irreversible destruction of the device. In this study, the international research team identified two main degradation mechanisms. The first is iodine loss due to hole tunneling into perovskite, which takes place even at low reverse-bias but decomposes the perovskite only after long time durations. Another factor is local heating at large reverse-bias leading to the formation of PbI₂, which starts at shunts and then follows the path of the least resistance for the cell current, which is primarily influenced by the electrode sheet resistance. The newly designed modules successfully endured the hotspot test conditions specified in IEC 61215-2:2016 international standard at an accredited module testing laboratory.

Researchers at South Korea's Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) and Pohang University of Science and Technology report a power conversion efficiency of 25.8% for a single junction perovskite solar cell, by forming a coherent interlayer between electron-transporting and perovskite layers to reduce interfacial defects.

The cell was built with an interlayer between a tin(IV) oxide (SnO₂) electron-transporting layer and a layer made of a halide perovskite layer by coupling chlorine-bonded SnO₂ with a perovskite precursor containing chlorine. 'This interlayer has atomically coherent features which enhance charge extraction and transport from the perovskite layer; and fewer interfacial defects,' the academics explained.

Saule Technologies, developer and manufacturer of perovskite solar cells, recently announced that it is 'making good progress towards getting listed on the NewConnect Alternative Trading System'.

Saule and its shareholders, including the majority holder, Columbus Elite Global S.A. (formerly Blumerang Investors S.A.), have signed an investment agreement, setting the rules for Columbus Elite Global (CEG) to acquire Saule's shares. With this transaction, Saule will become part of the CEG capital group, which is listed on NewConnect. In return for transferring their shares to Columbus Elite Global, Saule's shareholders will get shares in the higher share capital of CEG.

Researchers from Florida State University and Washington University in St. Louis have developed a new material for displays and a novel way to fabricate it'using an inkjet printer. The team used organometal halide perovskites ' with a novel twist.

The traditional way to create a thin layer of perovskites, which is in liquid form, is to drip it onto a flat, spinning substrate, in a process known as spin coating. As the substrate spins, the liquid spreads out, eventually covering it in a thin layer. From there, it can be recovered and made into perovskite LEDs, or PeLEDs. A lot of material, however, is wasted in that process'as the substrate spins at several thousand RPM, some of the dripping perovskite splatters and flies away, not sticking to the substrate. The researchers substituted this process with one based on an inkjet printer.

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A recent study by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), Technische Universität München, EPFL and The Pennsylvania State University has found that solar materials manufacturing could be aided by a new instrument that uses two types of light ' invisible X-ray light and visible laser light ' to probe a perovskite material's crystal structure and optical properties as it is synthesized.

'When people make solar thin films, they typically have a dedicated synthesis lab and need to go to another lab to characterize it. With our development, you can fully synthesize and characterize a material at the same time, at the same place', said Carolin Sutter-Fella, a scientist at Berkeley Lab's Molecular Foundry.

Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT-M) have developed a perovskite-based white light emitter for use in energy-efficient Light Emitting Diodes or LEDs.

As conventional LED materials cannot emit white light, to produce white light, specialized techniques such as coating blue LED with yellow phosphor and combining blue, green, and red LEDs have been used, along with a worldwide search for materials that can directly emit white light.