Scientists from Germany’s Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) and HTW Berlin have examined how precursor inks influence the quality of perovskite thin films. The best cells were scaled up to minimodule size. The team showed that when slot-die coating the halide perovskite layers on large areas, ribbing effects may occur but can be prevented by adjusting the precursor ink's rheological properties.

Prof. Dr. Eva Unger's team at Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin has extensive expertise in solution-based processing methods and is investigating options for upscaling. "Perovskite photovoltaics is the best solution-processable PV technology available," says Eva Unger, "but we are only just beginning to understand how the complex interaction of the solvent components affects the quality of the perovskite layers."

A team of scientists at Swansea University has used a combination of a low-temperature device structure and roll-to-roll-compatible solution formulations to make a fully roll-to-roll (R2R) printable device architecture overcoming interlayer incompatibilities and recombination losses.

A sample of the new fully roll-to-roll (R2R) coated device. Credit: Swansea University (from Techxplore)

This means that using slot die coating in a R2R process, the team from the SPECIFIC Innovation and Knowledge Center at Swansea University has established a way to create "fully printable" perovskite photovoltaics.

Researchers at France's National Solar Energy Institute (INES) – a division of the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) – and Italian renewables specialist Enel Green Power have reportedly developed a two-terminal tandem perovskite-silicon solar cell with a power conversion efficiency of 26.5%. 

The scientists said the new result improves on the 25.8% efficiency they achieved for the same kind of cell in December 2022. “The device with an active area of 9 cm² has an open-circuit voltage above 1,880 mV,” CEA-INES said, noting that the improvement on the device, which is based on a p-i-n configuration, was also due to “shading correction.” No additional technical details were disclosed.

Researchers at China's Shaanxi Normal University and Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) have designed a novel strategy to reduce the formation of anions vacancy defects in halide perovskite solar cells. The team reported that the new approach results in higher efficiency and remarkable stability.

The new method, which they defined as 'a one-stone-for-two-birds' strategy, utilized a ligand known as 3-amidinopyridine (3AP) to pin anions in the device. Anions can control the nucleation and growth of the perovskite crystals and act as a passivating agent to improve the crystallinity, thus ensuring improved efficiency. The team says the 3AP molecules deposited on the perovskite layer are able to form strong chemical bonds with the cell's lead(II) iodide (Pb–I) interlayer and, as a consequence, create a sustainable pinning effect.

Ascent Solar Technologies, a U.S. manufacturer of lightweight, flexible and durable CIGS thin-film photovoltaic (PV) solutions, has announced that it has commissioned its Thornton manufacturing facility as a Perovskite Center of Excellence (COE). Effective immediately, the facility will be dedicated to the industrial commercialization of Ascent’s patent-pending perovskite solar technologies that are reportedly demonstrating lab efficiencies above 20%.

Ascent has dedicated its Thornton facility to the purpose of Perovskite manufacturing development, and to the conversion of the Company’s patent-pending Perovskite solar technology to industrial scale. The COE is resourced by a dedicated team of experts spanning Research, Development, Manufacturing and Operations; USD $30 million of industrial equipment at original cost; Ascent’s patent-pending Perovskites intellectual property; and operational facilities with 17 years of manufacturing heritage.

Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Anhui University, Ocean University of China and Peking University have reported a one-step space confinement and antisolvent-assisted crystallization (SC-ASC) strategy for large-scale high-quality perovskite single crystal array for optoelectronic device integration. 

MAPbBr₃ MPs array fabricated on the 10 × 10 cm glass

This method provides comprehensive control over the perovskite single crystal array, including the array shape and resolution with crystal dimension and position accuracy as well as the in-plane rotation of the individual single crystal in a large-scale array configuration. 

Scientists China's Zhengzhou University,  Xi'an Jiaotong University and Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) have designed a solar cell based on low-dimensional Ruddlesden-Popper (LPDR) perovskite that is said to have improved carrier transport properties.

The team explained that the new cells are more stable compared to regular 3D perovskite solar cells and are suitable for building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV), conventional solar, and wearable devices.

Researchers at  the University of Oxford and the University of Potsdam have combined theoretical and experimental approaches to understand and reduce the losses of wide bandgap Br-rich perovskite pin devices at open-circuit voltage (VOC) and short-circuit current (JSC) conditions.

A mismatch between the internal quasi-Fermi level splitting (QFLS) and the external VOC is detrimental for these devices. The team demonstrated that modifying the perovskite top-surface with guanidinium-Br and imidazolium-Br forms a low-dimensional perovskite phase at the n-interface, suppressing the QFLS-VOC mismatch, and boosting the VOC.

The human brain can effortlessly process complex sensory information and learn from experiences, while a computer cannot. And, the brain does all this by consuming less than half as much energy as a laptop. One of the reasons for the brain's energy efficiency is its structure. The individual brain cells – the neurons and their connections, the synapses – can both store and process information. In computers, however, the memory is separate from the processor, and data must be transported back and forth between these two components. The speed of this transfer is limited, which can slow down the whole computer when working with large amounts of data.

One possible solution to this problem are novel computer architectures that are modeled after the human brain. To this end, scientists are developing 'memristors': components that, like brain cells, combine data storage and processing. A team of researchers from Empa, ETH Zurich and the Politecnico di Milano has developed a memristor based on perovskite materials that is more powerful and easier to manufacture than its predecessors.

Researchers at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan University of Technology and University of Toronto recently introduced a new approach for fabricating more stable 3D/2D heterostructures, preventing their degradation. Their approach is based on the introduction of an additional layer between the structures; 3D and 2D perovskite layers.

2D and quasi-2D modified 3D perovskite heterostructures (i.e., structures comprised of 3D and 2D perovskite materials) have several advantageous qualities, such as enabling the passivation of defects and a favorable band alignment, which improve a perovskite solar cells' open-change voltage and fill factor. 3D/2D heterostructures are typically created by spin coating an organic cation salt solution on top of a 3D perovskite material and forming a thin 2D perovskite layer on its surface. This process, however, can facilitate the subsequent degradation of the heterostructures in some conditions, due to the diffusion of ions between the 2D perovskite surface and underlying bulk 3D perovskite.