The Perovskite-Info newsletter (July 13, 2021)

The Department of Energy recently awarded $14 million to form a center, led by Sandia National Laboratories, to improve the understanding of perovskite-based photovoltaic technologies and determine the best tests to evaluate the new solar panels’ lifetimes.

Perovskite-based photovoltaic technologies still have several challenges to overcome before they can compete against conventional solar panels. The Perovskite Photovoltaic Accelerator for Commercializing Technologies Center aims to offer solutions to these challenges.

CubicPV is said to be in talks with the Indian government to participate in the performance linked incentives (PLI) scheme for solar equipment manufacturers. CubicPV was established as a result of a collaboration between Hunt Perovskite Technologies and 1366 Technologies.

CubicPV reportedly plans to invest $1.1 billion to set up 10 GW solar wafer and cells manufacturing capacity in India over the next five years. Frank Van Mierlo, CEO of CubicPV, said that the company is planning to bring its innovative products in the solar equipment category, such as wafers and semiconductors, to India.

Researchers from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia, in collaboration with University of Toronto, the National University of Singapore and National Technical University of Athens, have designed monolithic tandem solar cell with power conversion efficiency of 27%, surpassing the previous best reported value of 22% in the same configuration.

The team explains that translating the high power conversion efficiencies of single-junction perovskite solar cells in their classic, non-inverted (n–i–p) architecture to efficient monolithic n–i–p perovskite/silicon tandem solar cells with high current densities has been a persistent challenge due to the lack of low-temperature processable, chemically-insoluble contact materials with appropriate polarity and sufficient optical transparency. To address this, they developed sputtered amorphous niobium oxide (a-NbOx) with ligand-bridged C60 as an efficient electron-selective contact, deposited on the textured-silicon bottom cell.

Japan-based Green Science Alliance, which develops next-generation technologies for use in energy as well as in other fields, has invested in a Kyoto University start-up focused on perovskite solar cell research — EneCoat Technologies.

EneCoat is working on more efficient and durable perovskite cells while also looking to develop lead-free perovskite cells.

Researchers at the ARC Centre of Excellence in Exciton Science have identified a way to create Nickel oxide (NiO) films of sufficient quality in solution and at relatively low temperatures of less than 150 degrees Celsius.

NiO is used as an inexpensive hole-transport layer in perovskite solar cells because of its favorable optical properties and long-term stability. However, making high-quality NiO films for solar cells usually requires an energy intensive and high-temperature treatment process called thermal annealing, which is not only costly, but also incompatible with plastic substrates, until now precluding the use of NiO in the proposed manufacture of printed photovoltaics at commercial scale.

Researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) and Northwestern Polytechnical University in China have fabricated an inverted perovskite solar cell based on a star-shaped polymer that can reportedly improve charge transport and inhibit ion migration at the perovskite interface.

Schematic diagram of the interaction between the PPP polymer (partial 3D structure) and perovskite. Image from ScienceAdvances

The cell has a “p-i-n” layout and is based on a perovskite material known as CsMAFA modified with a polymer called polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane-poly(trifluoroethyl methacrylate)-b-poly(methyl methacrylate) or simply PPP polymer.