December 2018

2018 is soon over - and it was another exciting year for the perovskite industry. We've seen many new research advances, but more importantly , we are starting to see first signs of commercialization. 2018 was also an exciting year for Perovskite-Info, as we have experienced significant growth and published our Perovskite Handbook - which demonstrates positive sales and feedback.

Here are the top 10 stories posted on Perovskite-Info in 2018, ranked by popularity (i.e. how many people read the story):

1. Microquanta reaches 17.9% efficiency for perovskite solar mini-module (Jul 3)
2. Saule Technologies' perovskite-based solar panels headed for commercial implementation by building company Skanska (Jan 17)
3. Greatcell Solar announces bankruptcy (Dec 11)
4. Berkeley team creates perovskite material for smart photovoltaic windows (Jan 23)
5. Novel microscopic analysis of perovskite solar cells deepens understanding of their degradation (Jan 17)
6. Solliance and ECN make great strides in improving tandem solar cells (Mar 21)
7. Oxford PV sets new record with perovskite tandem solar cells with 27.3% conversion efficiency (Jun 26)
8. Duke team develops a method to create hybrid thin-film materials (Jan 4)
9. Researchers demonstrate controlled epitaxial growth of all inorganic lead-free halide perovskites (Apr 2)
10. New titanium-based material shows promise for lead-free perovskite-based PV (Feb 14)

The Henn-na Hotel in Japan, a technologically advanced hotel staffed by robots, now officially features perovskite solar technology developed by Saule Technologies. The installed commercial prototype is made of 72 perovskite modules encapsulated in curved glass.

The aim of the hotel's owner is to make it electrically sustainable. Believing the perovskite solar cells may be a solution and therefore introducing it as a part of the Henn-na Hotel latest tech-solutions, it became the first hospitality facility in the world to have perovskite technology adopted.

Oxford PV, a leading developer of perovskite solar cells, has announced a new, certified, 28% efficiency world record for its perovskite-based solar cell.

Oxford PV's 1 cm² perovskite-silicon tandem solar cell has achieved a 28% conversion efficiency, certified by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The achievement trumps Oxford PV's previous certified record of 27.3% efficiency for its perovskite-silicon solar cell, announced earlier this year.

Researchers from the Australian National University (ANU), in collaboration with researchers from and the California Institute of Technology, have developed a way to combine silicon with perovskites to achieve higher efficiencies and lower production costs. They believe that this could lead to cheaper and more efficient solar technology.

The new way to create crystalline silicon and perovskite tandem PV cells is claimed by the team to be the simplest method of doing so.

Researchers from Arizona State University have achieved 25.4% efficiency in their tandem solar cell stacked with perovskite and silicon. This follows, and surpasses, last year's achievement of 23.6% efficiency.

The team's improvement upon the record by nearly two percentage points was reached in a joint project with researchers at the University of Nebraska'Lincoln, predicting they'll be nearing 30% tandem efficiency within two years.

Quantum Dots are used today in the display industry to enhance the quality and efficiency of LCD-based displays, most notably in TVs (one example is Samsung's premium QLED TV range). While these are still LCD displays enhanced by QDs, quantum dots also have the larger potential to create truly emissive displays (QD-LED) which could compete with OLEDs and even surpass them in quality, efficiency and ease of production.

Several companies (including Samsung, BOE, LG, CSoT and others) are indeed developing QD-LED displays (Samsung, interestingly, is preparing to kick-start hybrid QD-OLED TV pilot production next year). Apple is not left behind, and the company is already known to be looking into QD-LED technologies.

Saule Technologies has been working with construction company Skanska on integrating Saules perovskite solar cells into buildings on a commercial scale. Now, it was announced that Skanska has gone through with the installation of the first big format perovskite solar panel provided by Saule Technologies, integrated into its office in Warsaw, Poland. The size of the solar panel being tested on Skanska's Spark office building is 1.3 x 0.9 meters, containing 52 photovoltaic modules.

Skanska stated that the use of perovskite technology for zero-energy buildings is the latest innovation in the developer's sustainable building strategy. Skanska is pioneering a method of covering office building exteriors with semi-transparent perovskite solar cells on a commercial scale.

An international team of researchers, including ones from KAUST, the Guo China-US Photonics Laboratory, the University of Rochester and the University of New South Wales, has developed a technique that allows single-crystal hybrid perovskite materials to be integrated into electronics. The team stated that this achievement opens the door to new research into flexible electronics and potentially reduced manufacturing costs for electronic devices.

Challenges in integrating single-crystal hybrid perovskites into electronic devices, such as transistors, have spurred much research focus. The main challenge in incorporating single-crystal hybrid perovskites into electronics stems from the fact that these macroscopic crystals, when synthesized using conventional techniques, have rough, irregular edges. This makes it difficult to integrate with other materials in such a way that the materials make the high-quality contacts necessary in electronic devices.

A team of researchers from Kaunas University of Technology (KTU), Lithuania, along with ones from Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin (HZB) science institute, Germany, have designed a novel approach to the selective layer formation in perovskite solar cells. The molecule, synthesized by the KTU chemists, assembles itself into a monolayer, which can cover a variety of surfaces and function as a hole transporting material in a perovskite solar cell. This results in a reduction of the amount of materials used in the process, thus reducing costs.

The molecule in this work assembles itself into a monolayer and can evenly cover any oxide surface (including textured surfaces of the silicon solar cells used in tandem architectures. "It's not polymer, but smaller molecules, and the monolayer formed from them is very thin. This, and the fact that the monolayer is being formed through dipping the surface into the solution makes this method much cheaper than the existing alternatives. Also, the synthesis of our compound is a much shorter process than that of the polymer usually used in production of perovskite solar cells", says Ernestas Kasparavičius, PhD student at KTU Faculty of Chemical Technology.

The Directors of Greatcell Solar have sadly announced that a decision was taken to appoint administrators to the Greatcell Solar group of companies following sustained, but ultimately unsuccessful, attempts to secure re-financing for its activities.

Greatcell Solar Limited, Greatcell Solar Industries and Greatcell Solar Australia were placed into voluntary administration. The decision follows a series of unfortunate and unwelcome developments in recent weeks, including the untimely death of Chief Scientist, Dr Hans Desilvestro in a mountaineering accident on 10 November.