KIT achieves 18 percent effectiveness with perovskite solar module

• Scientists at the German Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have actually produced perovskite solar modules with virtually no scaling losses. They combined serial interconnection by laser with vacuum processing of all layers of the solar cell.

With the combination of vacuum cleaner handling and laser ablation, the researchers at KIT's Light Technology Institute (LTI) accomplished effectiveness of up to 16.6 percent on a part location of more than 50 square centimeters and also of 18 percent on a location of four square centimeters - according to KIT, "globe record for vacuum-processed perovskite solar modules."

In photovoltaics, perovskite semiconductors "are considered to be especially appealing products for the future, thanks to their affordable accessibility, their simplicity of manufacture, and also their massive effectiveness capacity," according to the researchers. Produced busy, the cells currently accomplish effectiveness of greater than 25 percent.

" A vital challenge is to move the efficiencies attained on surfaces of a few square millimeters to normal solar module surface areas of several hundred square centimeters," claims Tobias Abzieher, who heads the development of vacuum-deposited perovskite solar cells at the LTI. In the case of perovskite solar modules, upscaling has up until now led to substantial losses in effectiveness. On the one hand, the bigger the areas, the harder it is to transfer the private solar cell layers, and also on the other hand, the series link leads to supposed dead areas between the energetic solar cell strips. These are areas that can not contribute to power generation later, yet would be needed for the series link, according to the Karlsruhe team, which decreased the influence of both loss devices by vapor-depositing all layers of the solar modules in a vacuum cleaner. The outcome is "a vital action from the lab to sector."

In the future, the scientists plan to work on enhancing the pure solar cell layer pile along with additional minimizing dead areas. "If we fully exploit the capacity of the technology, the production of perovskite solar modules with efficiencies of dramatically more than 20 percent even on even larger areas is a goal that can be recognized in the near future," claims Ulrich W. Paetzold, head of the cross-institutional Taskforce Perovskite Photovoltaics at KIT. The research in the department "Next Generation Photovoltaics" at the Institute of Microstructure Technology (IMT) and at the LTI of KIT is sustained by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy in the joint project CAPITANO and also within the EU Framework Program for Research and also Innovation Horizon 2020.