© HZB/Baip
Inolope Expo 2025
© HZB/Baip
© HZB/Baip
© HZB/Baip
We look back on 3 exciting days at the Inolope Expo 2025.
From February 12 to 14, 2025, the first Inolope Expo took place in Dortmund, a trade fair covering all aspects of innovative building envelopes. In addition to trade associations from the façade technology and green building sectors, various suppliers offered technical solutions for the façade design of today and tomorrow. An interesting program of specialist lectures, product presentations and panel discussions was offered on all three days at the dedicated trade fair forum.
The trade fair took place parallel to the established elektrotechnik, the trade fair for building, energy and industrial technology. The combination of the two trade fairs meant that there were many specialists who were particularly interested in the field of photovoltaics, as well as visitors who were explicitly interested in the building envelope, both in terms of design and function.
We from BAIP were represented with our own stand, which gave visitors a clear and practical insight into the possibilities of building-integrated photovoltaics. In particular, our 1:1 scale demonstrators of a solar façade and a roof section with solar roof tiles drew the attention of many interested visitors to us and our topics.
In over 360 stimulating conversations with the knowledgeable visitors, we were able to discuss the opportunities and challenges of building-integrated photovoltaics in depth, refute some prejudices and, above all, provide advice and information.
In close cooperation with the organizers of the trade fair and under the excellent moderation of Fabian Flade from the BIPV Alliance, we were able to provide various insights into topics such as building law and simulation of BIPV projects at the Inolope expert forum and present current results and experiences from our BIPV living laboratory / HZB. Together with Gunter Mann from the Bundesverband GebäudeGrün and Markus Schultz from the Verband für Fassadentechnik, we discussed “New Approaches” for the building envelope on a panel.
All in all, the first Inolope Expo was a great success for us at the BAIP. We were able to reach many interested people and also take away a few suggestions. We will certainly be continuing some of the discussions in the coming weeks.
- New contact material boosts the efficiency of perovskite solar cellsA newly developed material for the electron contact improves the efficiency of single perovskite solar cells and perovskite/silicon tandem solar cells. The new material is based on a carborane molecule. It offers several advantages over the standard material C60, as shown by the study led by Steve Albrecht’s team. The new material has since been patented and is already commercially available.
- Precision interface chemistry pushes perovskite solar cells beyond 26% efficiencyAn international research collaboration has developed a new molecular strategy for controlling one of the most critical interfaces in perovskite solar cells. The resulting solar cells reached a power conversion efficiency of 26.19% in the n i p architecture, together with strong operational stability under prolonged illumination and elevated temperature. The results have been published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
- Perovskite triple-junction solar cells: Even more efficient with GO/SAM bilayersPerovskite semiconductors efficiently convert sunlight into electrical energy; they are also inexpensive and extremely lightweight. A team at HZB has developed a triple-junction solar cell comprising different perovskite semiconductors, with a novel bilayer of graphene oxide (GO) and a self-assembled monolayer (SAM) as the hole conductor. This bilayer significantly increases both efficiency and long-term stability. The efficiency of the novel perovskite triple-junction solar cell is 27.3% and shows hardly any decline even after more than 770 hours of operation. The study has been published in the renowned journal Joule.