A research team, led by Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE), studied two stages of cell manufacturing that are among the most in need of optimization due to growing concerns over the availability of the commonly used indium and silver: transparent conductive oxide deposition and cell metallization.

The research takes processes used in silicon heterojunction (HJT) cell manufacturing as a starting point, and examines how the addition of a perovskite top cell would change the requirements for the rest of the cell structure.

The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded The University of Toledo (UToledo) a one-year, $300,000 grant to advance research that could lead to the integration of promising perovskite solar cell technology into existing production lines for cadmium-selenide-telluride (CST)-based solar cells, maximizing the performance of thin-film tandem solar cells and reducing the costs of energy.

UToledo's work aims to collect light from both the front and back sides of the solar panel while interconnecting layers of perovskites and CST cells on both the front and the back faces of the solar panel. UToledo has a patent pending on the technology called monolithic bifacial perovskite-CST tandem cell.

Scientists in Germany's Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have applied vapor-based deposition techniques and laser scribed interconnection (well established processes in existing thin-film solar manufacturing) to fabricate perovskite mini modules which achieved a maximum efficiency of 18% for a device measuring 4cm².

The team believes that based on these processes, it would be possible to simplify processing and reduce losses associated with scaling up to commercial-sized devices.