'Printable' perovskite solar cells achieve 26% PCE

Researchers from the City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK) have developed a new generation of printable perovskite solar cells that offer higher stability and efficiency, with a minimal carbon footprint. The researchers aim to establish a pilot production line within one and a half years, paving the way for a sustainable future.

Solar energy presents a viable solution to sustainably meeting the future energy demands of global society; while silicon-based technologies currently dominate the global photovoltaic market, they face challenges such as high production costs and limited flexibility in product applications. Professor Alex Jen Kwanyue has led the development of perovskite solar cells at CityUHK. The perovskite solar cells developed by Jen and his research team have achieved a power conversion efficiency of over 26% in laboratory testing. They also successfully addressed the common stability issues by demonstrating perovskite solar cells with an estimated lifetime of over 20 years through accelerated aging tests, comparable to that of silicon-based cells in the market.

According to Jen, the new-generation perovskite solar cells are manufactured from perovskite precursor inks, which can be coated and ‘printed’ on a substrate to form thin polycrystalline perovskite films with a processing temperature as low as 100°C.

“This enables rapid mass production of the perovskite solar cells, like printing newspapers. This significantly reduces energy consumption and production costs compared to those for manufacturing traditional silicon solar cells, which require high-temperature processes at over 1000°C and significantly more processing steps. The final comparable cost of energy for perovskite solar cells can be just half that of silicon polar cells,” Jen said.

Perovskite solar cells are also less dependent on incident angles and light intensity and have superior mechanical flexibility, allowing them to be easily integrated into various applications such as building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPVs) and powering indoor Internet-of-Things (IoT) sensors.

The researchers are collaborating with industry partner and investor Abes Technology Group, to develop BIPV products that integrate perovskite solar cells, including solar tile decking, solar water floating decks and exterior wall panels. The researchers plan to set up a pilot production line with an annual capacity of 20 MW within one and a half years.

In the longer term, the researchers will focus on developing and manufacturing new-generation perovskite solar panels to provide scalable, low-cost electricity for centralised and distributed applications, including power grids, smart cities, IoT sensors and wearables, to offer diverse perovskite solar products in different configurations and form factors (rigid or flexible).

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