A team of researchers at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) has created a perovskite solar mini module that has reportedly recorded the highest power conversion efficiency of any perovskite-based device larger than 10 cm².

The NTU researchers report that they have adopted a common industrial coating technique called 'thermal co-evaporation' and found that it can fabricate solar cell modules of 21 cm² size with record power conversion efficiencies of 18.1%.

Research by scientists at the Eindhoven University of Technology and universities in China and the US sheds new light on the causes of the degradation perovskites undergo when exposed to sunlight and paves the way for designing new perovskite compositions for the ultimate stable solar cells.

The new research focuses on perovskite solar cells made from formamidinium-caesium lead iodide, a halide compound that has become increasingly popular as it combines high efficiency and reasonable heat resistance with low manufacturing costs.

Researchers at the University of Sydney and University of New South Wales working with chemists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the United States have created a highly efficient and long-lasting solar-flow battery, which is a way to generate, store, and redeliver renewable electricity from the sun in one device.

The new device is made of perovskite-silicon tandem solar cells integrated with specially designed chemical battery components. The solar-flow battery achieved a new record efficiency of 20 percent conversion of energy from the sun. This is 40 percent more efficient than the previous record for solar-flow batteries, which were also developed in the University of Wisconsin Jin lab where lead author, PhD student Wenjie Li, is based.

A team of researchers from MIT and Northwestern University has created hybrid perovskite materials that could help improve the quality of solar cells and light sources. They demonstrated the ability to fine-tune the electronic properties of these hybrid perovskite materials.

The materials are classified as “hybrid” because they contain inorganic components like metals, as well as organic molecules with elements like carbon and nitrogen, organized into nanoscale layers. In the new paper, the researchers showed that by strategically varying the composition of the organic layers, they could tune the color of light absorbed by the perovskite and also the wavelength at which the material emitted light. Importantly, they accomplished this without substantially changing the inorganic component.

Researchers from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) have created next-generation perovskite-based solar modules with high efficiency and good stability. These solar modules can reportedly maintain a high performance for over 2000 hours.

"There are three conditions that perovskites must meet: they must be cheap to produce, highly efficient and have a long lifespan," said Professor Yabing Qi, head of the OIST Energy Materials and Surface Sciences Unit, who led this study.

Australian Scientists from the University of New South Wales have outlined a new method for ensuring more of the sun’s energy can be converted into electricity by using sunlight that would otherwise be wasted as heat.

In a photovoltaic solar cell, sunlight is converted into electricity through a process called the photoelectric effect, where individual packets of light, called photons, transfer their energy onto electrons within the solar cell material. If a sufficient amount of energy is transferred by light to an electron, an amount of energy known as the “bandgap”, the electron is knocked loose from its atom and creates an electric current. This is the process by which solar panels convert light into electricity.