Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have reported the development of an environmentally-stable perovskite solar cell that reportedly maintained 94% of its starting efficiency after 1,000 hours of continuous use under ambient conditions.

“During testing, we intentionally stress the cells somewhat harder than real-world applications in an effort to speed up the aging,” says an involved researcher at NREL. “A solar cell in the field only operates when the sun is out, typically. In this case, even after 1,000 straight hours of testing the cell was able to generate power the whole time.”

GreatCell Solar recently released a fascinating commercialization schedule for perovskite solar cells, as part of the Company's quarterly report. The schedule includes two timelines, one for glass and one for metal.

The glass section has 2018 as the year in which pilot lines will be set up, and 2019 as a production target. The metal section sees 2018 as a year focused in prototypes, 2019 on pilot lines and 2020 as a production timeline goal. This seems to be an encouraging aim and hopefully the actual progress will live up to expectations. We will certainly stay updated!

Researchers at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) Center for Computational Materials Science, working with an international team of physicists, have found that nanocrystals made of cesium lead halide perovskites (CsPbX3), is the first discovered material which the ground exciton state is "bright," making it an attractive candidate for more efficient solid-state lasers and light emitting diodes (LEDs).

The work focused on lead halide perovskites with three different compositions, including chlorine, bromine, and iodine. Nanocrystals made of these compounds and their alloys can be tuned to emit light at wavelengths that span the entire visible range, while retaining the fast light emission that gives them their superior performance.

A study by EPFL researchers Michael Grätzel and Amita Ummadisingu offers valuable insight into the sequential deposition reaction. This process, used as one of the main methods for depositing perovskite films onto panel structures, was developed in 2013 by Michael Grätzel and co-workers at EPFL. Many studies have since tried to control this process with additives, compositional changes, and temperature effects, but none of these has provided a complete understanding of the entire sequential deposition reaction. This prevents adequate control over film quality, which determines the performance of the solar cell.

The EPFL scientists began with X-ray diffraction analysis and scanning electron microscopy to study in depth the crystallization of lead iodide (PbI2), which is the first stage of the reaction. They then used, for the first time, SEM-cathodoluminescence imaging to study the nano-scale dynamics of perovskite film formation.