Perovskite

Researchers from Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) investigated the commercial prospects of perovskite-silicon tandem PV technologies and found that, in order to bring them closer to market maturity, their cost should not exceed by 30% that of crystalline silicon counterparts. Their roadmap stresses the importance of reducing perovskite degradation and improving product stability.

Chinese solar perovskite specialist Mellow Energy and the Jinan University developed a new manufacturing process for perovskite solar modules that enables the formation of a protective layer at the interface between the perovskite absorber and the electron transport layer. This prevents the effusion of volatile components from the perovksite film.

Indoor solar cell developer, Perovskia Solar, is setting up a factory in Switzerland that may reportedly print 1 million of its custom-designed perovskite devices annually. It targets the market for self-powering consumer electronics and internet-of-things devices, such as fire-alarms, fitness trackers, and sensors.

Italian module manufacturer FuturaSun has big expansion plans in China, with the first phase of a 15 GW silicon cell fab due online in Huai’an in the first quarter of 2024, in addition to 1 GW of module production in Taizhou. Erik Eikelboom, technical adviser to FuturaSun, offers a closer look at the project.

Researchers at RMIT University’s School of Science, Monash University and Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) have harnessed artificial intelligence to accelerate the design and production of perovskite solar cells.

A group of scientists in Korea has a hot-air technique instead of atomic layer deposition to fabricate a perovskite absorber that reportedly shows a higher film quality. They applied this film in a perovskite-organic tandem solar cell, which exhibited low open-circuit voltage losses and high efficiency levels.

China Three Gorges has commissioned a 1 MW pilot solar plant with perovskite panels near Ordos, in China’s Inner Mongolia region. This marks the world’s first commercial PV system to use perovskite tech and features 11,200 modules from an undisclosed manufacturer.

First Solar and its cadmium telluride (CdTe) technology dominate thin-film solar in the mainstream market. Valerie Thompson looks at the US-based business and the future of thin-film PV technology.

A group of international researchers has developed a new perovskite-silicon solar cell design using a top perovskite PV device with an energy bandgap of 1.67 eV and a new self-assembly monolayer based on carbazole. The tandem cell achieved a higher efficiency compared to counterparts without the monolayer and passed the IEC 61215 standard thermal cycling test.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences has unveiled a high-efficiency perovskite solar cell with a purported peak efficiency rating of 26.1%, by using 1-(Phenylsulfonyl)pyrrole (PSP) as an additive. The cell is third-party certified with an efficiency of 25.2%, and it maintains 92% of its original efficiency after 2,500 hours of operation.