Transparency - Page 3

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.

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have developed a new wide-bandgap perovskite layer – called Apex Flex – which they claim is able to withstand heat, light, and operational tests, and at the same time provide a reliable and high voltage.

With this material, they have built tandem solar cells with 23.1% power conversion efficiency on a rigid substrate, and 21.3% on flexible plastic. The new Apex Flex wide-bandgap perovskite recombination layer is grown with atomic layer deposition (ALD). The new material is described as a “nucleation layer consisting of an ultra-thin polymer with nucleophilic hydroxyl and amine functional groups for nucleating a conformal, low-conductivity aluminum zinc oxide layer.”

University of North Texas professor Anupama Kaul has received a $474,000 grant from the Office of Naval Research under the Department of Defense to develop new perovskite-based solar cell technology.

Kaul, who directs the Nanoscale Materials and Devices Lab and the PACCAR Technology Institute, intends to utilize perovskite materials that are extremely efficient at absorbing incoming light. Many perovskites used in solar cell research are made with solutions, and yet, remarkably, the solution processed materials are still highly absorbing to incoming light. The main advantage of solution processing is that it greatly reduces manufacturing costs of solar cells compared to the sophisticated and expensive infrastructure needed to make them with crystalline materials.

NUS researchers have developed transparent, near-infrared perovskite light-emitting diodes (LEDs) that could be integrated into the displays of smart watches, smart phones and augmented or virtual reality devices.

a A transparent PeLED overlaid across a smart-watch display to show high optical transparency and neutral color. b Near-infrared photo showing bright NIR electroluminescence from the transparent PeLED above the smart-watch display. Image from article

These transparent devices are constructed with an ITO/AZO/PEIE/FAPbI₃/poly-TPD/MoO₃/Al/ITO/Ag/ITO architecture, and offer a high average transmittance of more than 55% across the visible spectral region.

Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory have demonstrated a prototype solar-powered rooftop smart window based on an optimization algorithm capable of balancing a building's temperature demands and lighting needs.

The device is described as an energy-harvesting smart window built with semi-transparent lead-halide perovskite solar cells and multi-layer photonic structures and assembled with layer-by-layer spin coating. 'The lead-halide perovskite was chosen because of its capability of using a wide spectrum of sunlight and its simplicity in maintaining visible light transparency,' the team wrote.

A UNIST research team has developed an electrode that can significantly improve the stability of perovskite solar cells. UNIST announced that its research team developed 'flexible and transparent metal electrode-based perovskite solar cells with a graphene interlayer'.

The team suppressed interdiffusion and degradation using a graphene material with high impermeability, the team said. Team leader professor Hyesung Park commented that the research will greatly help not only solar cells but other perovskite-based flexible photoelectric devices such as LEDs and smart sensors.

An international team of scientists recently developed a new composite material based on perovskite nanocrystals to fabricate miniature light sources with improved performance.

Protection of perovskite nanocrystals within porous glass microspheres made it possible to increase their stability by almost 3 times. Moreover, the subsequent coating of these particles with polymers resulted in the fabrication of water-dispersible luminescent microspheres based on CsPbBr₃ nanocrystals. This method of fabrication is especially important for the implementation of perovskite nanocrystals in diverse biological applications.

Researchers at Northern Illinois University and the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Colorado have reported on a potential breakthrough in the development of hybrid perovskite solar cells.

Led by Tao Xu of NIU and Kai Zhu of NREL, the scientists have developed a technique to sequester the lead used to make perovskite solar cells and minimize potential toxic leakage by applying lead-absorbing films to the front and back of the solar cell.

Researchers in Australia's University of Sydney have found a way to manipulate laser light at a fraction of the cost of current technology. The discovery could help drive down costs in industries as diverse as telecommunications, medical diagnostics and consumer optoelectronics.

The polarization of transmitted light is rotated by a crystal immersed in a magnetic field (top). The perovskite crystal (bottom right) rotates light very effectively, due to the atomic configuration of its crystal structure (bottom left)

The research team, led by Dr Girish Lakhwani from the University of Sydney Nano Institute and School of Chemistry, has used inexpensive perovskite crystals to make Faraday rotators. These manipulate light in a range of devices across industry and science by altering a fundamental property of light ' its polarization. This gives scientists and engineers the ability to stabilize, block or steer light on demand.

A joint research team from the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST) and the Korea Photonics Technology Institute has developed perovskite-enabled hybrid flexible copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) thin-film solar cells that can convert all ultraviolet, visible and infrared sunlight into electric energy.

Current flexible CIGS thin-film solar cells are limited by a short wavelength band, from 300 to 390 nanometers, which is absorbed from the transparent electrodes at the top of the solar cell. They cannot convert short wavelength solar energy into electricity. The research team succeeded in developing CsPbBr₃ perovskite high-efficiency fluorescents that light up visible light bands by absorbing the light in the ultraviolet region, and applied them to the top of the transparent photoelectric layer of CIGS solar cells.