Perovskites Hold Promise of Profit from More Efficient Solar Cells - 2020

Solar Energy / Resource Evaluation

 Fialka reported in early 2020 that the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is forming a consortium of universities and startup companies to commercialize perovskites, a group of minerals that scientists say holds great promise in making cheaper and more efficient solar cells, as well as a family of other advanced technologies.

"Perovskites have the potential to become a game-changer for solar and many other fields," said Martin Keller, the director of NREL, yesterday. An accompanying statement from NREL, part of the Department of Energy, said the move toward further investment in commercial development could help form a "vibrant community of domestic industrial leaders" in the United States. Perovskite can be used in making solar cells — an area currently dominated by China and other Asian nations. But it has potential in other products, too, such as solid-state lighting, advanced radiation detection, photocatalysis, and dynamic sensing and actuation, NREL said.

The possibility of multi-industry breakthroughs in advanced technology comes from the discovery of a strange, metallic-looking rock found in the Ural Mountains in Russia in 1839. It was ignored for 170 years until 2009. Then a Japanese researcher found that the minerals in the rock, which were plentiful throughout the world, could absorb sunlight and turn it into electricity, the way silicon cells do now (Climatewire, April 24, 2017). Yesterday's move created the U.S. Manufacturing of Advanced Perovskites Consortium (US-MAP), which includes executives of six founding U.S. companies and other firms that would help guide the continuing development of commercial products.

US-MAP also will include the universities of Washington, North Carolina and Toledo. They will help the companies use their research facilities to develop fabrication and testing techniques to start production. The consortium "will help startups like ours access critical expertise required to prove manufacturability and product reliability, while maintaining ownership of intellectual property," said Jared Silvia, the CEO of BlueDot Photonics, a Seattle-based startup that is focused on building next-generation solar panels and other photonic devices.

Having a larger group of advisers, noted Silvia, would assist companies in "de-risking key hurdles to commercialization." Other companies involved include: Energy Materials Corp., First Solar, Hunt Perovskite Technologies, Swift Solar and Tandem PV. Experts estimate that perovskite solar cells may be three to five years away from production. A major advance occurred earlier this year when NREL scientists found a coating that stopped lead used in prototype cells from leaking into the environment (Climatewire, Feb. 21).

Current solar cells made from silicon and used for rooftop photovoltaic arrays have reached a level of 21% efficiency in making electricity from photons in sunlight. Laboratory experiments combining silicon cells with a thin film made from perovskite have raised that to 26.4%. The economics are also more attractive because future perovskite cells may be cheaper and are believed to be simpler to manufacture than silicon cells, which can take as many as 14 fabrication steps, according to researchers. What remains to be tested is the longevity of possible variants of the perovskite cell. Current rooftop panels made from silicon are guaranteed to last for 25 years with relatively little degradation from exposure to sunlight and weather elements such as snow and hail.

Perovskites, a class of minerals that share a common crystalline structure of cubes and diamond-like shapes, draw their name from Lev Perovski, a Russian mineral expert who first discovered and studied them. He died in 1856.