Energy Materials Corporation (EMC), developer of high-speed roll-to-roll manufacturing of solar energy panels, recently announced that it has developed an enabling process to print transparent conductors as part of the scale-up of its inline manufacturing process.

Roll-to-roll printing of metal conductors on Corning Willow Glass (flexible glass) at 60 meters per minute reportedly sets a world speed record for printing flexible electronics on glass. The process surpasses the company's goal of achieving less than 5% loss in the transmission of light though the conductive layer.

An international group of researchers, led by the University of Padova in Italy, has designed a hole extraction layer with water-splitting additives to reduce the impact of moisture in perovskite solar devices. They reported that the method ensured a power conversion efficiency of more than 9% in perovskite cells stored for a month in a water-saturated atmosphere.

There is an ongoing search for moisture stability in perovskite solar cells (PSCs), as protecting the perovskite layer from moisture is key to preventing excess water from forming on the layer itself and affecting overall performance. The new proposed solution to this issue integrates water-splitting (WS) hydrophobic layers to the perovskite absorber of a standard perovskite cell. The ancillary layers can purportedly convert incoming water into oxygen and hydrogen.

The Emerging PV Reports Initiative (EPVRI) is a new academic international framework for collecting, presenting and analyzing data about the best achievements in the research of emerging photovoltaic materials, e.g., organic, perovskite and dye sensitized solar cells, among others. The new database for collecting, displaying, and analyzing the performance of emerging photovoltaic technologies was spearheaded by researchers in a worldwide international consortium: the Emerging PV Reports initiative.

In order to provide an up-to-date and easy-to-access platform with a global scope, the Emerging PV initiative was established by a consortium of experienced academic researchers from more than 15 countries, all of whom are experts in new and emerging photovoltaic research directions.

Energy Materials Corporation (EMC) has stated its plans for roll-to-roll printing of perovskite PV on glass.

The plan is backed by two partnerships, one with the Eastman Kodak Company for roll-to-roll printing and another with glass and ceramics company Corning, for flexible glass. EMC's funding includes a $4 million research grant from the Solar Energy Technologies Office of the U.S. Department of Energy.

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have developed a new wide-bandgap perovskite layer – called Apex Flex – which they claim is able to withstand heat, light, and operational tests, and at the same time provide a reliable and high voltage.

With this material, they have built tandem solar cells with 23.1% power conversion efficiency on a rigid substrate, and 21.3% on flexible plastic. The new Apex Flex wide-bandgap perovskite recombination layer is grown with atomic layer deposition (ALD). The new material is described as a “nucleation layer consisting of an ultra-thin polymer with nucleophilic hydroxyl and amine functional groups for nucleating a conformal, low-conductivity aluminum zinc oxide layer.”

University of North Texas professor Anupama Kaul has received a $474,000 grant from the Office of Naval Research under the Department of Defense to develop new perovskite-based solar cell technology.

Kaul, who directs the Nanoscale Materials and Devices Lab and the PACCAR Technology Institute, intends to utilize perovskite materials that are extremely efficient at absorbing incoming light. Many perovskites used in solar cell research are made with solutions, and yet, remarkably, the solution processed materials are still highly absorbing to incoming light. The main advantage of solution processing is that it greatly reduces manufacturing costs of solar cells compared to the sophisticated and expensive infrastructure needed to make them with crystalline materials.

NUS researchers have developed transparent, near-infrared perovskite light-emitting diodes (LEDs) that could be integrated into the displays of smart watches, smart phones and augmented or virtual reality devices.

a A transparent PeLED overlaid across a smart-watch display to show high optical transparency and neutral color. b Near-infrared photo showing bright NIR electroluminescence from the transparent PeLED above the smart-watch display. Image from article

These transparent devices are constructed with an ITO/AZO/PEIE/FAPbI₃/poly-TPD/MoO₃/Al/ITO/Ag/ITO architecture, and offer a high average transmittance of more than 55% across the visible spectral region.

Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory have demonstrated a prototype solar-powered rooftop smart window based on an optimization algorithm capable of balancing a building's temperature demands and lighting needs.

The device is described as an energy-harvesting smart window built with semi-transparent lead-halide perovskite solar cells and multi-layer photonic structures and assembled with layer-by-layer spin coating. 'The lead-halide perovskite was chosen because of its capability of using a wide spectrum of sunlight and its simplicity in maintaining visible light transparency,' the team wrote.

A UNIST research team has developed an electrode that can significantly improve the stability of perovskite solar cells. UNIST announced that its research team developed 'flexible and transparent metal electrode-based perovskite solar cells with a graphene interlayer'.

The team suppressed interdiffusion and degradation using a graphene material with high impermeability, the team said. Team leader professor Hyesung Park commented that the research will greatly help not only solar cells but other perovskite-based flexible photoelectric devices such as LEDs and smart sensors.

An international team of scientists recently developed a new composite material based on perovskite nanocrystals to fabricate miniature light sources with improved performance.

Protection of perovskite nanocrystals within porous glass microspheres made it possible to increase their stability by almost 3 times. Moreover, the subsequent coating of these particles with polymers resulted in the fabrication of water-dispersible luminescent microspheres based on CsPbBr₃ nanocrystals. This method of fabrication is especially important for the implementation of perovskite nanocrystals in diverse biological applications.