The Perovskite-Info newsletter (November 15, 2022)

It was recently reported that Contemporary Amperex Technology Limited (CATL), the Chinese manufacturer of energy devices, has filed to publicize its patents for the designs and manufacturing processes of several PV products.

The patents, which have been applied under the category of solar PV products, cover a backsheet, a transparent substrate, a perovskite PV cell, and a device design.

Researchers from the University of Tokyo have made progress with the development of blue-emitting quantum dots, which is seen as highly challenging. They have shown that using a new bottom-up design strategy and self-organizing chemistry can help create a high purity blue-emitting QD material (with a narrow emission spectrum).

The newly developed QDs have a special chemical composition that combines both organic and inorganic substances, such as lead perovskite, malic acid, and oleylamine. The materials self-aligned into a cube of 64 lead atoms. The lead researcher, Professor Eiichi Nakamura, says that "it took over a year of methodically trying different things to find that malic acid was a key piece of our chemical puzzle".

Researchers from Korea's PEROLED, Seoul National University and Korea Basic Science Institute (KBSI), along with scientists from the UK's University of Cambridge, have reported an ultra-bright, efficient and stable perovskite LED made of core/shell perovskite nanocrystals with a size of approximately 10 nm, obtained using a simple in situ reaction of benzylphosphonic acid (BPA) additive with three-dimensional (3D) polycrystalline perovskite films, without separate synthesis processes.

During the reaction, large 3D crystals are split into nanocrystals and the BPA surrounds the nanocrystals, achieving strong carrier confinement. The BPA shell passivates the undercoordinated lead atoms by forming covalent bonds, and thereby greatly reduces the trap density while maintaining good charge-transport properties for the 3D perovskites.

Researchers from the Technical University of Dresden, led by Prof. Yana Vaynzof, have demonstrated a new concept for the formation of a heterojunction for photovoltaics. The team took advantage of the fact that materials can often exist in different structural configurations, termed crystalline phases. This phenomenon, called polymorphism, means that the same material can exhibit different properties, depending on the specific arrangements of atoms and molecules in its structure.

By interfacing two such phases of the same material, Prof Vaynzof and her team demonstrated for the first time the formation of a phase heterojunction solar cells. Specifically, the researchers chose a caesium lead iodide perovskite – a highly efficient solar cell absorber material – in the beta and gamma phases to realise their new concept.

French solar module manufacturer Voltec Solar and the Institut Photovoltaïque d’Île-de-France (IPVF) have announced plans to set up a factory for four-terminal (4T) tandem perovskite-silicon solar panels in France. The “France PV Industrie” project aims to build a gigafactory for solar panels, with a dual objective: to produce more efficient solar panels locally and to create a sustainable industry, based on a fast-growing market and a breakthrough technology.

The IPVF and Voltec plan to create a joint venture (France PV Industrie) so they can secure the necessary financing to scale up to industrial production. The pilot line will require an investment of €15 million ($15.4 million) and the industrial demonstrator €50 million. The partners estimate the total investment at around €1 billion by 2030. The facility will make modules based on IPVF's 4T tandem solar cell technology. The two entities plan to set up the first pilot production line by the end of 2023 and the first 200 MW industrial demonstrator in 2025. They will then increase the factory's capacity to 1 GW in 2027 and 5 GW by 2030.