A team of Chinese and US scientists from Shenzhen Institute of Technology, Shijiazhuang Tiedao University, Peking University, Argonne National Laboratory, Institute of Metal Research, and University of Washington, have grown a monocrystalline version of a perovskite solar cell.

The created cell is reportedly of high quality and firmly incorporated on FTO/TiO2. To create it, the team has taken advantage of capillary effect and temperature gradient during the growth process. This achievement is considered to be critical, since FTO/TiO2 is regarded as the most extensively used electron-collecting substrate for perovskite solar cells, making the succeeding device fabrication straightforward. Although it won’t replace monocrystalline silicon cells anytime soon (the new cell’s efficiency is only 9%), it’s the first time perovskite has been grown as a single cell.

Researchers from North Carolina State University have used perovskites to significantly boost the efficiency of a technique that splits carbon dioxide (CO₂) to create carbon monoxide (CO). The CO₂-splitting process reportedly converts more than 98% of the CO₂ into CO. In addition, the process also uses the resulting oxygen to convert methane into syngas, which is itself a feedstock used to make fuels and other products.

For the CO₂-splitting process, researchers developed a nanocomposite of strontium ferrite dispersed in a chemically inert matrix of calcium oxide or manganese oxide. As CO₂ is run over a packed bed of particles composed of the nanocomposite, the nanocomposite material splits the CO₂ and captures one of the oxygen atoms. This reduces the CO₂, leaving only CO which is valuable because it can be used to make a variety of chemical products, including everything from polymers to acetic acid.

A team of researchers from the University of Sheffield, alongside collaborators from the universities of Kent, Nottingham and Leicester, has investigated and confirmed the potential for Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) in addressing global environmental challenges.

The team compared PSCs with other existing photovoltaic technologies, including an examination of the kind of materials used in their production, the difficulty of manufacturing them, and costs involved in producing and manufacturing them. They also carried out a systematic hybrid life cycle assessment of PSCs, meaning that every aspect associated with PCSs, including greenhouse gas emission, material use, land use, pollution and toxicology, was considered.

A team of researchers at Stanford University has used an insect-inspired design to protect perovskite materials for solar cells from deteriorating when exposed to heat, moisture or mechanical stress.

"We were inspired by the compound eye of the fly, which consists of hundreds of tiny segmented eyes," explained a professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford and senior author of a study. "It has a beautiful honeycomb shape with built-in redundancy: If you lose one segment, hundreds of others will operate. Each segment is very fragile, but it's shielded by a scaffold wall around it."

A team of researchers at the Netherlands’ AMOLF institute has modelled the performance of tandem perovskite/silicon solar cells under real-world climate conditions, and found that the tandem cells are just a little more efficient than the Si cell alone in the cloudy climates of the test locations. The research shows, however, that if correctly optimized, this type of cell could perform at efficiency levels above 38%.

Discounting all parasitic absorption in the transparent contacts of the perovskite cell, say the researchers, the tandem cells exhibited efficiency advantages of between 1.8% and 3.3%, far less than expected under ideal conditions.