The Perovskite-Info newsletter

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and the University of Tennessee have proposed a way to automate the search for new materials, with a focus on metal halide perovskites (MHPs), to advance solar energy technologies. The study, part of an ORNL-UT Science Alliance collaboration, aims to identify the most stable MHP materials for device integration.

The automated workflow combines chemical robotics and machine learning to speed the search for stable perovskites. Credit: Jaimee Janiga/ORNL, U.S. Dept of Energy

The team has developed a novel workflow that combines robotics and machine learning to study metal halide perovskites. “Our approach speeds exploration of perovskite materials, making it exponentially faster to synthesize and characterize many material compositions at once and identify areas of interest,” said ORNL’s Sergei Kalinin.

GCL Optoelectronics Technology Holdings, a subsidiary of China’s Golden Concord Holdings Limited (GCL), recently closed a new financing round to enable it to expand its pilot perovskite solar module production to the mass production level.

According to various reports and news, the company has announced raising more than RMB 100 million (around $15.36 million) for a 100 MW mass production line for these modules.

A joint research project by scientists from several China-based universities and laboratories has developed a 2D perovskite material for highly efficient LEDs.

Effects of MeS on phase distribution of perovskite films. The yellow path indicates the exciton energy transfer between nanosheets of different thicknesses. Credit: Nature

LEDs are ubiquitous, but current high-quality LEDs still need to be processed at high temperatures and require elaborate deposition technologies — which makes their production cost expensive. Scientists have recently realized that metal halide perovskites can be extremely promising candidates for next generation LEDs. These perovskites can be processed into LEDs from solution at room temperature, thus largely reducing their production cost. However, the electro-luminescence performance of perovskites in LEDs still has room for improvements.

A team of researchers from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the University of Utah has developed a new type of LEDs that utilizes spintronics without needing a magnetic field, magnetic materials or cryogenic temperatures.

“The companies that make LEDs or TV and computer displays don’t want to deal with magnetic fields and magnetic materials. It’s heavy and expensive to do it,” said Valy Vardeny, distinguished professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Utah. “Here, chiral molecules are self-assembled into standing arrays, like soldiers, that actively spin polarize the injected electrons, which subsequently lead to circularly polarized light emission. With no magnetic field, expensive ferromagnets and with no need for extremely low temperatures. Those are no-nos for the industry.”

Researchers from Clemson University, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Jilin University, Kowloon Tong Hong Kong, the Israeli Technion and The University of Alabama have used laser spectroscopy in a photophysics experiment, and have broken new ground that could result in faster and cheaper energy to power electronics.

This novel approach, using solution-processed perovskites, could revolutionize a variety of everyday objects such as solar cells, LEDs, photodetectors for smart phones and computer chips. The goal of the research was to make materials that are more efficient, cheaper and easier to produce.

United Renewable Energy (URE), a U.S -based solar company, has announced that it has made a breakthrough in developing perovskite solar cells in collaboration with National Taiwan University, with energy conversion rates reaching as high as 26%, the company claims. It seems that these cells by URE are silicon/perovskite tandems.

URE said it has also developed N-type HJT and TOPCon solar cells. URE has reportedly begun shipments for HJT solar cells with a maximum energy conversion rate of 24.5% and will start small-volume production of TOPCon solar cells later in 2021.

Researchers at Duke University have revealed the illusive molecular dynamics that provide halide perovskites with their desirable properties for solar energy and heat energy applications.

A key contributor to how these materials create and transport electricity reportedly stems from the way their atomic lattice twists and turns in a hinge-like fashion. The results could help materials scientists tailor the chemical recipes of these materials for a wide range of applications in an environmentally friendly way.

Maya -2, the Philippines second cube satellite, was recently released to space from the International Space Station. Maya-2, designed and built by Filipino scholars, is a 1.3-kg satellite that can remotely collect data using a Store-and-Forward (S&F) mechanism and capture images and videos using an on-board camera.

It is equipped with various advanced technologies, and perovskite solar cells are among these technologies.

An international research team has developed a flexible quantum dot solar cell based on all-inorganic cesium-lead iodide (CsPbI₃) perovskite.

The researchers built the cell by integrating quantum dots (QDs) with high surface areas into a thin hybrid interfacial architecture (HIA) and by adding phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM), which is known as one of the best-performing electron acceptors commonly used in organic photovoltaic devices, into the CsPbI₃ quantum dot layer.