A UNIST research team has developed an electrode that can significantly improve the stability of perovskite solar cells. UNIST announced that its research team developed “flexible and transparent metal electrode-based perovskite solar cells with a graphene interlayer”.

The team suppressed interdiffusion and degradation using a graphene material with high impermeability, the team said. Team leader professor Hyesung Park commented that the research will greatly help not only solar cells but other perovskite-based flexible photoelectric devices such as LEDs and smart sensors.

A team of researchers from Mahidol University, Chiang Mai University and PERCH-SIS Institute in Thailand has developed a new precision spray-coating method that enables more complex perovskite solar cell designs and could be scaled up for mass production.

The researchers demonstrated the technique by depositing a perovskite material with higher stability on different perovskite material with better electrical properties. Applying different perovskite materials in each layer can be used to customize a device’s properties or meet specific performance and stability requirements.

Researchers in Japan's Kyushu University have modified the tin(IV) oxide layer of a perovskite device with a fullerene-derivative-based self-assembled monolayer to produce a cell they claim offers stability and a reduction in the hysteresis effect which makes predicting power output so tricky.

The Kyushu University team has developed a surface treatment method for perovskite cell production they say reduces hysteresis – an effect which afflicts perovskite devices because their output depends on a variety of previous inputs rather than just their immediate condition, rendering performance less predictable. In perovskite cells, hysteresis is strictly dependent on the composition of the material. Ion migration and non-radiative recombination near interfaces are generally considered responsible for the effect.

An international team of researchers has announced the development of the world's most compact perovskite-based semiconductor laser that works in the visible range at room temperature. According to the authors of the research, the laser is a nanoparticle of only 310 nanometers in size (which is 3,000 times less than a millimeter) that can produce green coherent light at room temperature.

The scientists succeeded in exploiting the green part of the visible band, which was considered problematic for nanolasers. "In the modern field of light-emitting semiconductors, there is the 'green gap' problem," says Sergey Makarov, principal investigator of the article and professor at the Faculty of Physics and Engineering of ITMO University. "The green gap means that the quantum efficiency of conventional semiconductor materials used for light-emitting diodes falls dramatically in the green part of the spectrum. This problem complicates the development of room temperature nanolasers made of conventional semiconductor materials."

Helio Display Materials, based in the UK, was spun-off from both Oxford and Cambridge University, to commercialize photoluminescent and electroluminescent perovskite-based materials for the display industry.

Following is an interview with Helio's CEO, Simon B. Jones, discussing the company's technology and business.