TT-Award 2025: Perovskite solar cells from Germany
This year's HZB Technology Transfer Award goes to Kevin J. Prince and Siddhartha Garud. © HZB / M. Setzpfandt
Congratulations to the winning teams:
First place: Siddhartha Garud and Kevin J. Prince (third and fourth from left)
Second place: Prashanth W. Menezes and Carsten Walter (first and second from left)
Third place: Michele Segantini (right) © HZB M. Setzpfandt
During the poster presentation, guests had the opportunity to talk to all of the finalists. © HZB / M. Setzpfandt
Many attentive eyes in the audience during the finalists’ presentations. © HZB / M. Setzpfandt
Photovoltaics is the leading technology in the transition to clean energy. However, traditional silicon-based solar technology has reached its efficiency limit. Therefore, a HZB-team has developed a perovskite-based multi-junction cell architecture. For this, Kevin J. Prince and Siddhartha Garud received the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin's (HZB) Technology Transfer Prize of 5,000 euros.
Prince sees perovskite as the future: "Perovskite can be the key for production in Europe by dramatically reducing the energy and material cost levels for production, while also offering higher efficiencies unreachable by current mainstream technology." The goal is to revive PV manufacturing in Germany and Europe.
The project was selected in September 2024 for the German government's German Accelerator U.S. Climate Tech Market Discovery Program. The groundbreaking technology was presented at Climate Week NYC, the Greater Miami Chamber Climate Tech and the Eco Summit in Berlin, among others.
"We have successfully created a proof of concept on a small scale. As a breakthrough technology, it is currently in the research and development phase," said Garud.
Second place was awarded to the ClearWater project led by Carsten Walter and Prashanth W. Menezes. ClearWater extends the traditional water purification stages - coagulation, aeration (aeration) & sedimentation and filtration & disinfection - to include the process of photocatalysis. The third prize was awarded to Michele Segantini's team for the development of a miniaturised and portable quantum sensor for detecting free radicals in various industrial applications. The potential applications are diverse, for example in foods such as beer and olive oil, but also in batteries, lubricating oil and pharmaceutical products.
From a total of 15 competition entries from HZB research teams, the jury, consisting of members of the HZB Industrial Advisory Board, selected the six final projects, all of which demonstrated a different facet of research. The degree of innovation and market potential were decisive factors in the evaluation of the projects. The public was also allowed to vote to determine the winning projects.
NEPTUNE with nanoscale electrochemical probes (Dr Neha Jha, Dr Martin Munz), an X-ray microscope with photoelectron detection (Prof. Dr Gerd Schneider, Dr Stefan Rehbein) and CLIMAT, magnetotransport induced by constant light (Dr Artem Musiienko) were also nominated.
The prize is awarded every two years to stimulate transfer and encourage researchers to drive their developments towards application.
Prof Maximilian Fleischer, CTO at Siemens Energy Ventures and Chairman of the Industrial Advisory Board, praised the high standard of all the competition entries. "The quality was incredible. Several projects deserved the prize. This emphasises the international appeal of HZB in research and industry".
- Susanne Gietl
- BESSY II: New sample environment allows glimpse into thermocatalytic processesA novel measurement cell allows, for the first time, soft and hard X-ray investigations under high pressures of up to 20 bar and temperatures of up to 400°C. This provides new insights into thermocatalytic processes, such as the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis for producing synthetic fuels. The development of the measurement cell is considered a significant achievement within the Care-O-Sene project.
- 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.