Perovskite solar cells: TEAM PV develops reproducibility and comparability
Perovskite materials for photovoltaic applications come in many shades, reflecting their huge variety of optical properties. This makes them uniquely fit to be combined with other materials in multijunction solar cells. © M. Setzpfandt/HZB
At HZB several labs are dedicated to perovskite research. Here different compositions of the material can be prepared. © M. Setzpfandt/HZB
The HZB runs a testing facility in order to observe different perovskite solar cells in real life conditions. © HZB
Ten teams at Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin are building a long-term international alliance to converge practices and develop reproducibility and comparability in perovskite materials. The TEAM PV project is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), Germany.
Solar energy is already the cheapest way to generate electricity in many parts of the world. But the world needs much higher efficiency solar modules to power demanding sectors such as electric vehicles, steel production, and AI. Likely the only option for increasing efficiency within the next decade is halide perovskites, a new class of materials that has been the subject of intensive research in the last decade. And while the silicon modules that dominate the market today are mainly produced in China, production facilities for halide perovskite cells could also be set up in Europe and the US, de-risking supply chains.
However, the road from the laboratory to mass production is long and there are still a number of hurdles to overcome. "The central goal is to increase the manufacturability, stability, and reliability of perovskite-based technologies. We urgently need common protocols to reliably compare diverse global developments in these novel materials and also to predict their service life," says Dr Siddhartha Garud, who drives the management of the TEAM PV project at HZB. Within this project, HZB aims to converge best practices in fabrication and analyses together with the National Renewable Energy Lab NREL, the University of Colorado Boulder and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
One of the main questions is how the stability determined in a laboratory will behave under real conditions in a field. Another focus will be on machine learning methods to navigate this extremely vast class of materials and devices. The participating teams will work closely together to further develop the fabrication and analysis of perovskite thin films and full devices.
The BMBF is providing a total of €4 million in funding for the TEAM PV project for tools, personnel and researcher exchanges. "We want to establish a long-term partnership in photovoltaics with sustained researcher exchanges and also make it a starting point for further collaborations between the Helmholtz Association and National Labs and top Universities in the U.S.", Garud says.
- Battery research: visualisation of aging processes operandoLithium button cells with electrodes made of nickel-manganese-cobalt oxides (NMC) are very powerful. Unfortunately, their capacity decreases over time. Now, for the first time, a team has used a non-destructive method to observe how the elemental composition of the individual layers in a button cell changes during charging cycles. The study, now published in the journal Small, involved teams from the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB), the University of Münster, researchers from the SyncLab research group at HZB and the BLiX laboratory at the Technical University of Berlin. Measurements were carried out in the BLiX laboratory and at the BESSY II synchrotron radiation source.
- New instrument at BESSY II: The OÆSE endstation in EMILA new instrument is now available at BESSY II for investigating catalyst materials, battery electrodes and other energy devices under operating conditions: the Operando Absorption and Emission Spectroscopy on EMIL (OÆSE) endstation in the Energy Materials In-situ Laboratory Berlin (EMIL). A team led by Raul Garcia-Diez and Marcus Bär showcases the instrument’s capabilities via a proof-of-concept study on electrodeposited copper.
- Green hydrogen: A cage structured material transforms into a performant catalystClathrates are characterised by a complex cage structure that provides space for guest ions too. Now, for the first time, a team has investigated the suitability of clathrates as catalysts for electrolytic hydrogen production with impressive results: the clathrate sample was even more efficient and robust than currently used nickel-based catalysts. They also found a reason for this enhanced performance. Measurements at BESSY II showed that the clathrates undergo structural changes during the catalytic reaction: the three-dimensional cage structure decays into ultra-thin nanosheets that allow maximum contact with active catalytic centres. The study has been published in the journal ‘Angewandte Chemie’.