The Perovskite-Info newsletter

In 2020, Saule Technologies set out to develop an animal-tracking system, assisted by perovskite-based pv modules, to support the monitoring of European bison in Ukraine. Now, Saule Technologies has reported the development of one of the first real-life applications of perovskite solar cells - powering the telemetry collar for European bison.

The newly-developed solar-powered collar was designed to be more optimal for monitoring big wildlife than commercially available asset-tracking devices, as capturing big, long-lived mammals like bison in order to replace the battery is understandably troublesome and costly. The project was executed in collaboration with WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature) Ukraine and co-financed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Polish Challenge Fund.

A research team at HZB has used four-dimensional modelling to interpret structural data of methylammonium lead bromide (MAPbBr₃), identifying incommensurable superstructures and modulations of the predominant structure.

Despite intensive research, it was not possible to precisely elucidate the crystal structures of perovskites with their diverse modulations and superstructures as a function of temperature, even for the best-known perovskite compounds such as methylammonium and formamidinium lead halide. Now, the HZB team has analyzed structural data of methylammonium lead bromide (MAPbBr₃) with a novel model. Postdoc Dr. Dennis Wiedemann used a model that takes a fourth dimension into account in addition to the three spatial dimensions. The structural data were measured at a temperature of 150 Kelvin at the University of Columbia.

The U.S. Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office is funding the "American-Made Challenges: Perovskite Startup Prize" - a two-stage, $3 million prize competition designed to accelerate the development and manufacturing of perovskite solar cells by moving world-class research out of the lab and into new U.S. companies.

Competitors who advance from the first stage to the second will receive a $200,000 cash prize. The winners of the second stage will receive $500,000 in cash—a combined total of $700,000—plus $100,000 in technical support vouchers for launching a viable solar manufacturing company with the potential to introduce marketable perovskite products in the United States.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) recently announced an ambitious new target to cut the cost of solar energy by 60% within the next ten years, in addition to nearly $128 million in funding to lower costs, improve performance, and speed the deployment of solar energy technologies.

To that end, the DoE has allocated funding through its Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO), to support advancing two materials used to make solar cells: perovskites and cadmium telluride (CdTe) thin films.

An international interdisciplinary team, led by MIT, has designed a new approach to narrowing the search for the best candidates for long-lasting perovskite formulations.

Their system has already identified one composition that in the lab has improved on existing versions more than tenfold. Even under real-world conditions at full solar cell level, beyond just a small sample in a lab, this type of perovskite has reportedly performed three times better than the state-of-the-art formulations.