The European Commission has established a new research training network, led by the University of Bath, to make perovskites "truly exploitable" and make perovskite-based devices commercially viable. The new program, called MAESTRO, has been given â¬4 million in funding and has begun hiring researchers to gain new knowledge and provide innovation in the exploitation of perovskite materials.
A trans-European project, MAESTRO is an inter-sectoral and multidisciplinary network of 10 academic and seven industrial partners from nine EU and EU-Associated countries: the UK, Italy, Spain, Greece, Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Israel and Switzerland.
Professor Alison Walker, from the University of Bath Department of Physics and coordinator of MAESTRO, said: "Tremendous progress has been made on perovskite technologies since they were found to be good solar absorbers at the start of the decade, and now MAESTRO will help us unlock their full potential... Improving device lifetime, increasing the scale of manufacturing, eliminating the effect of material toxicity and boosting efficiency will further establish perovskite as the solar material of the future."
Researchers will be based at each partner institution and will work in a diverse range of fields, including physics, chemistry, materials science and electrical engineering.
The project is led by the University of Bath's Professor Alison Walker. Its UK partners also include the University of Oxford, the University of Swansea and the companies Oxford PV, Greatcell Solar and the National Physical Laboratory in the UK.