Perovskite solar cells

The perovskite solar race is heating up, with a cue of manufacturers forming to test products at the US Department of Energy’s (DoE) PV commercialization facilities, and academics on both sides of The Pond announcing new advances in recent months.

NASA has discovered that perovskite solar cells tested in space exhibit less degradation than reference devices tested on Earth. The agency acknowledged that it is uncertain about the specific factors in the space environment that contributed to the superior performance of the perovskite absorber film.

Researchers at the National Institute of Technology (NIT) Silchar, Assam, have designed a formamidinium tin iodide (FASnI3) active layer-based perovskite solar cell that achieves an admirable power conversion efficiency of 31.57% while scoring well on other performance parameters too. 

Chinese researchers have developed a solar cell using CsSnI3 perovskite, known for its unique phase transitions and near-IR emissions. By simulating the device with various electron transport layers (ETLs) and hole transport layers (HTLs), they determined that the optimal cell could be created using a titanium oxide (TiO2) ETL and a nickel(II) oxide (NiOx) HTL.

First Solar has agreed to pay $38 million to buy Swedish manufacturing startup Evolar AB, as it seeks to expand development of high-efficiency tandem PV tech.

The US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has certified that a South Korean research team has achieved a 25.73% efficiency rating with a perovskite PV cell based on alkylammonium chlorides. The champion device built by the scientists reached an efficiency of 26.08%.

A US-Canadian group of scientists has used Lewis base molecules to improve surface passivation in a perovskite solar cell. The team produced a device with a high open-circuit voltage and remarkable stability levels.

A numerical study by researchers at India’s Chitkara University shows enhanced performance in the top device of a tandem solar cell based on copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS). The design had a higher open-circuit voltage, with the top cell acting as a current-limiting cell.

Researchers led by the University of Rochester claim to have increased the photoresponsivity of a lead-halide perovskite for solar cell applications by 250%. They created a perovskite film with a plasmonic substrate made of hyperbolic metamaterial and characterized it with transition dipole orientation.

A group of researchers from Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) has achieved a new world efficiency record for a silicon-perovskite tandem solar cell, with a certified efficiency of 32.5%.