
Stable perovskite-silicon printable solar cells with 25% efficiency - bookofjoe
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/367/6482/1097
======
NextHendrix
Metal halide perovskite cells have shown very high efficiencies before, but
there have always been a load of problems with them that have made them
unsuitable for large scale production. They are very sensitive to
discrepancies in deposition thickness on the substrate. This means you can
spin coat very small cells in a lab, but applications on larger substrates
always gives a massive decrease in efficiency. I see this paper talks about
cells with an area of 1cm^2, so presumably this problem is still not overcome.

------
lukevp
I don’t know enough about this space to parse this article without lots of
effort - what is the current state of the art for solar cell efficiency and
how scalable is the manufacturing process? Is the printable part the
significant advancement?

~~~
extrapickles
You can buy ~30%, and labs have demonstrated ~40%.

This could make multi-junction cells cheaper if they have solved some of the
durability issues with perovskite.

~~~
Gibbon1
What's interesting about the last ten years is previously the cells dominated
the cost of panels. But they are so cheap that other costs, glass, aluminum,
manufacturing, installation are significant. That starts pushing you back
towards higher efficiency solar cells.

But yeah everything I've read about perovskite is it's got problems with
moisture. There are reports from the field of 30 year old silicon based panels
that 'work fine'. Since solar panels have high capital costs the more durable,
the lower the depreciation rate the better.

Edit: Just a caution. A lot of work was done over the last 50-60 years on
alternatives to Silicon for semiconductors and outside of a few niches[1]
they've all failed.

[1] Examples: Gallium Arsenide for high performance RF. Silicon Carbide for
high temp power transistors. Various materials for LED's.

~~~
ncmncm
Gallium Nitride for power supplies and >20GHz RF.

