Perovskite solar production - Page 5

CubicPV is said to be in talks with the Indian government to participate in the performance linked incentives (PLI) scheme for solar equipment manufacturers. CubicPV was established as a result of a collaboration between Hunt Perovskite Technologies and 1366 Technologies.

CubicPV reportedly plans to invest $1.1 billion to set up 10 GW solar wafer and cells manufacturing capacity in India over the next five years. Frank Van Mierlo, CEO of CubicPV, said that the company is planning to bring its innovative products in the solar equipment category, such as wafers and semiconductors, to India.

Researchers from the Emerging Electronic Technologies Group of Prof. Yana Vaynzof at Germany's Technische Universität Dresden have found that fundamental processes that occur during perovskite film formation strongly influence the reproducibility of the photovoltaic devices.

When depositing the perovskite layer from solution, an antisolvent is dripped onto the perovskite solution to trigger its crystallization. "We found that the duration for which the perovskite was exposed to the antisolvent had a dramatic impact on the final device performance, a variable which had, until now, gone unnoticed in the field." says Dr. Alexander Taylor, a postdoctoral research associate in the Vaynzof group and the first author on the study. "This is related to the fact that certain antisolvents may at least partly dissolve the precursors of the perovskite layer, thus altering its final composition. Additionally, the miscibility of antisolvents with the perovskite solution solvents influences their efficacy in triggering crystallization."

GCL Optoelectronics Technology Holdings, a subsidiary of China's Golden Concord Holdings Limited (GCL), recently closed a new financing round to enable it to expand its pilot perovskite solar module production to the mass production level.

According to various reports and news, the company has announced raising more than RMB 100 million (around $15.36 million) for a 100 MW mass production line for these modules.

Energy Materials Corporation (EMC), developer of high-speed roll-to-roll manufacturing of solar energy panels, recently announced that it has developed an enabling process to print transparent conductors as part of the scale-up of its inline manufacturing process.

Roll-to-roll printing of metal conductors on Corning Willow Glass (flexible glass) at 60 meters per minute reportedly sets a world speed record for printing flexible electronics on glass. The process surpasses the company's goal of achieving less than 5% loss in the transmission of light though the conductive layer.

Energy Materials Corporation (EMC) has stated its plans for roll-to-roll printing of perovskite PV on glass.

The plan is backed by two partnerships, one with the Eastman Kodak Company for roll-to-roll printing and another with glass and ceramics company Corning, for flexible glass. EMC's funding includes a $4 million research grant from the Solar Energy Technologies Office of the U.S. Department of Energy.

Researchers at South Korea's KRICT, led by Seo Jang-won, have demonstrated pilot-scale "roll-to-roll" (R2R) manufacturing of flexible and light perovskite solar cells.

As an eco-friendly antisolvent, Seo's team introduced tert-butyl alcohol (tBuOH), a colorless solid, which melts near room temperature and has a camphor-like odor, for R2R processing through cooperation with VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland.

Japan-based global conglomerate Toshiba, announced that it would not take any new orders for the construction work of coal-fired thermal facilities. The company is planning to shift towards renewable energy solutions.

According to Toshiba, the company will support the infrastructure sector's transformation to achieve decarbonization goals. In addition to activities involving windmills and development of secondary batteries, Toshiba aims to commercialize its newly developed next-generation tandem and perovskite solar cells by 2025.

Reports out of China suggest that a perovskite photovoltaic cell production line has gone into production in Quzhou, east China's Zhejiang Province.

The 40-hectare factory was reportedly funded by Microquanta Semiconductor and expected to produce more than 200,000 square meters of photovoltaic glass before the end of 2020.

Saule Technologies announced that it finished construction of the first stage of its new cleanroom. The entire working area will be around 430 m², and should be complete in a couple of weeks.

Saule Technologies aims to launch a prototype production line by Q4 2019. The production line will include a modular system of printers with an annual production capacity of 40,000 sqm. In 2020, the company aims to increase the annual production capacity to 200,00 sqm.

After forming a strategic partnership in March 2019 between Meyer Burger and Oxford Photovoltaics, Meyer Burger has announced that it has received its first order from Oxford Photovoltaics (Oxford PV), for a heterojunction (HJT) manufacturing line including necessary adaptions enabling the upgrade to perovskite-on-HJT tandem technology.

The order for the upgrade itself will reportedly follow later this year. The current contract volume is about CHF 20 million and provides Oxford PV with an initial manufacturing capacity of 100 MW with plans to expand tandem solar cell production capacity to 250 MW by the end of 2020.