Oxford Photovoltaics (PV) has been awarded a â¬2.8 million grant from the German Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy to prepare perovskite-silicon solar cells for high-volume manufacturing. The technology consortium is by headed by Oxford PV and includes specialist PV equipment manufacturer VON ARDENNE and three German institutes, Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) and the Technical University of Berlin.
The newly funded project focuses on the optimization of the perovskite-silicon tandem solar cell architecture, to make further efficiency improvements on industrial 156 mm x 156 mm wafer formats. Importantly, this will include the refinement of industrial scale process technology as well as life-cycle analysis on the social-environmental impact of such cells.
'Oxford PV has made substantial progress in scaling and preparing its technology for high volume manufacturing,' added Frank P. Averdung, Chief Executive Officer at Oxford PV. 'With commercial sized tandem cells already in production at our pilot line ' it is now a matter of further optimizing the process, in preparation for commercial deployment.'