Perovskites

Sticky Solar Power is taking orders for industrial-scale versions of its novel room-temperature cell interconnection system, which is reportedly well-suited for back-contact (xBC), perovskite, and heterojunction cell technologies.

Canon has announced a new functional material for perovskite thin film passivation that potentially improves durability of perovskite solar cells while enabling a mass-production process. The Japanese company aims to start commercial production of the material in 2025.

US scientists have analyzed the impact of “seasoning” a formamidinium lead iodide solution with two-dimensional (2D) perovskites. They have found that the template improved the efficiency and durability of their solar cells.

Swift Solar, a specialist in perovskite tandem photovoltaics, plans to build a factory in the U.S. in the next two to three years to manufacture thin-film solar.

The result is the best efficiency ever recorded for a carbon-based PV cell using unconventional hole transporting materials to date. The device was built with a hole transparent layer based on electrochemically produced large-area phosphorene flakes, which reportedly enable the required band energy alignment within the cell.

A research team in Australia has used a lamination technique known as cold isostatic pressing (CIP) to build a perovksite solar cell based on a flexible bilayer electrode made of carbon and silver that can reportedly compete with gold-carbon eletrode based counterparts in terms of efficiency and stability.

A Chinese research team has modified the absorber of a conventional perovskite solar cell with potassium trifluoromethanesulfonate (KTFS) and found that the additive improved the device performance and stability. The cell’s perovskite film reportedly showed less lead defects and lower J-V hysteresis.

Researchers from the U.S. and South Korea have developed a method to make high-quality perovskite films at room temperature. The film was tested in a conventional perovskite solar cell architecture and the result was a power conversion efficiency of exceeding 24%.

The US Department of Energy (DoE) has provided Tandem PV with $4.7 million in funds to advance the commercialization of the company’s thin-film solar technology.

Solertix claims to have reduced yield losses in cell-to-module scaling by utilizing ultranarrow interconnection of 19.5 μm. It also says the proposed interconnection technique may be used to achieve a 30% efficiency in area-matched 4T tandem designs featuring a perovskite module over a silicon cell.