Saule Technologies recently announced a 4.35 Million Euro grant from the Polish National Centre for Research and Development (NCBR), to push forward the mass production of flexible perovskite solar modules for IoT applications.

Solar cell powered beacon

Saule Technologies has pioneered the manufacturing of flexible perovskite solar cells. These types of devices offer excellent energy harvesting capabilities, particularly interesting for applications where the presence of direct sunlight is not prevalent. Saule stated that perovskite-based solar cells are the fastest evolving solar technology to date, with their single junction record power conversion efficiency in the lab already achieving 25.2% under one sun condition. However, this performance can be significantly higher when perovskites are exposed to artificial light, which is critical for the IoT solutions.

Florida State University (FSU) researchers have discovered a novel structure for metal halide perovskite materials that shows potential for more efficient technologies.

Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Biwu Ma and his team's new study explains how they created a hollow nanostructure for metal halide perovskites that would allow the material to emit a highly efficient blue light.

Researchers at Arizona State University have demonstrated a perovskite-silicon tandem cell they claim has low reflectance losses and strong potential for commercial production. The ASU team says that this new cell could lead to 30% efficiency tandem devices. The tandem architecture involves a manufacturing process featuring the solution-based blading of perovskites onto textured silicon wafers.

Image credit: Joule

The device is manufactured in a nitrogen-assisted blading process which ensures deposition of the perovskite layer onto textured silicon is achieved with typical pyramid heights of 1μm. The manufacture of such tandem devices typically results in perovskite heights of 3-10μm.