Oxford Photovoltaics recently announced an equity investment of £8.1 million (around US $10.2 million), adding to the £8.7 million first close investment announced in October 2016. The bulk of this investment will reportedly come from three new strategic investors: Statoil ASA, Legal & General Capital and a technology-focused, innovative family fund investor.

Oxford PV recently announced the acquisition of a pilot line site in Germany and, in the beginning of December 2016, announced a Joint Development Agreement with a major solar panel manufacturer to scale the technology towards commercialization. This additional injection of funds will hopefully help accelerate these development activities as well as support the next generation product research in the UK.

Researchers at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) and research institute ECN (part of the Solliance collective) have found that adding a thin layer of aluminum oxide helps protect a perovskite solar cell against humidity, as well as add a yield boost of 3%.

The scientists covered the sensitive layer of perovskite with a few atomic layers of aluminum oxide to protect against degradation caused by humidity. These layers are contained within the solar cell, between the layers of perovskite and electric contact. The researchers chose aluminum oxide (Al2O3) since it can form immediately on any kind of surface. The team explained that despite the fact that Al2O3 has electrically insulating properties, it can still be used as a buffer layer between the semi-conductive perovskite and the conductive contacts by limiting the thickness of the layer to one nanometer or less. This way, charge carriers can then tunnel electrically through the insulator layer.

Researchers at the EPFL, along with scientists from Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) have used microscopy with mass spectrometry to study the nanoscale elemental distribution of mixed perovskites, which is particularly relevant for photovoltaic reproducibility and efficiency.

Perovskite are usually deposited as thin films on a surface, and they self-organize into crystals capable of being used for efficient solar cells. Limited information is available about the self-organization of the material, or how the different elements distribute - all of which is vital for optimizing perovskite photovoltaics. This is why the team tried to reveal significant micro- and nanoscale elemental and structural properties in self-organizing mixed perovskite films.

Researchers from the National Institute for Materials Science in Japan have developed new additives for the hole-transporting layer of perovskite solar cells, which aim to greatly improve cell stability. When placed in the dark, the cells did not show signs of deterioration even after 1,000 hours of testing, and under continuous light soaking, they lasted six times longer (in terms of the time it takes for their power conversion efficiencies to fall to 85% of their initial states) compared to cells treated with conventional additives.

The researchers hope that these results will accelerate the commercialization of perovskite solar cells. The research group directed its focus on a pyridine-based additive, TBP, which is used as an additive in a hole-transporting layer in the mesoporous-type cell structure. After conducting experiments and analyzing the results, the group found that chemical reactions occurring between TBP and perovskite materials were one of the major causes of stability deterioration.