The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) launched its new investment plan, defining the distribution of the $800 million USD fund over the next few years, with solar PV innovation one of the main new areas of focus - including perovskite-based PV.

The plan, titled 'Innovating Energy', puts forward four new priorities and all new funding applications have been assessed using these criteria. Among other points, ARENA will prioritize improving cell and module efficiency in silicon, perovskite and tandem cells. It will also focus on durability of PV modules with new encapsulation techniques to address degradation and new tools to uncover defects. It will also look across the range of balance of system (BOS) technologies to reduce costs in wiring, switches and inverters. New products with flexible and transparent applications will also be examined with an emphasis on turning R&D into manufacturing supply chains.

Researchers at the Argonne-Northwestern Solar Energy Research Center (ANSER) have developed a way to protect perovskites from water and stabilize them against heat. By carefully growing an ultrathin layer of metal oxide on a carbon coating, the researchers made a perovskite PV device that worked even after dousing the device with a stream of water.

The researchers placed a layer of PC61BM, a carbon-based material, on top of the perovskite, which has two roles. First, PC61BM is good at extracting electrons once they are excited by sunlight. Also, the PC61BM layer protects the perovskite from water vapor, which is one of the reactants used for forming the final protective coating ' titanium dioxide.