IRPV · Chalcogenide-perovskites for infrared photovoltaics
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2020-05-04 → 2023-11-02
- EU contribution
- €146,112
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Chalcogenide-perovskites for infrared photovoltaics
Currently, the energy generated from renewable sources is of critical importance to the carbon-neutral and sustainable future society. Wind and solar energies are the fastest-growing markets with deployment of over 100 GW every year worldwide. The main technology in capturing solar energy is based on the photovoltaic (PV) effect and a typical high-end solar cell has about 25% of energy conversion efficiency. Building solar parks on hundreds of GW scale, thus requires very large territories which leads to a more negative effect on the environment and competition with agriculture for land use. Therefore, it is essential to increase the efficiency and longevity of current solar cells to mitigate the impact of the solar energy sector. The only working PV technology that can go beyond 30% efficiency is realised by stacking multiple solar cells together – a device known as a multijunction solar cell (MJSC). Immense resources are being dedicated to the development of tandem MJSC (crystalline Si + metal halide perovskite) which are designed to exploit the visible portion of the Sun’s spectrum more effectively, but the infrared part is completely neglected. Optimized solar cell technology working in the short-wavelength infrared region could significantly boost the overall efficiency of MJSC allowing it to approach 40%. Established technologies and materials that can be employed in infrared solar cells are either composed of expensive and/or hazardous elements, or their fabrication costs are extremely high. Considering that the deployment level of solar energy has reached over 100 GW per year, technologies capable of supporting this demand should be pursued. Therefore, the IRPV project aims to explore novel materials for infrared solar cells. Researchers targeted a material class known as chalcogenides with a specific chemical structure – ABX3, where A and B are metals and X is sulphur or selenium. These materials were theoretically predicted to have suitable optoelectronic properties for PV application and the goal of the IRPV project was to synthesize and study them.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Solar energy reaching Earth is ubiquitous and unlimited. However, current solar technologies in the market converting light directly to electricity theoretically can harvest only 33% of this energy. Stacking several solar cells with appropriate optical properties, power conversion efficiency (PCE) can be almost doubled. Albeit, current multiple junction (MJ) solar cells are very expensive and unaffordable for large scale applications.Combination of well-established thin film solar technologies is a promising strategy for fabrication of high-efficiency and cost-effective MJ solar cells. Dual junction solar cells combining Si and wide bandgap thin films are extensively studied. Infrared (IR) part of solar spectrum is not utilized by such dual junction. PCE can be boosted up to 49% by adding IR solar cell. However, there are only few materials with suitable bandgap for IR solar cells, and they contain toxic chemical elements and/or are expensive to synthesize.Evidently, there is an urgent need to explore novel materials for IR solar cells which is the main goal of the current Marie Skłodowska-Curie project. Chalcogenide-perovskites (CP) is an emerging class of materials that has been highly regarded for optoelectronic application. However, little experimental evidence of photovoltaic (PV) properties has been demonstrated. This project aims to unravel the potential of CP materials for IR PV. First bulk material will be synthesized and characterized to filter out CPs with 0.7 eV bandgap. Then, CP thin films will be fabricated and tested to evaluate potential for PV.The researcher dr. Rokas Kondrotas will be returning after a two-year post-doc in China. He will be contracted with Fiziniu ir Technologijos Mokslu Centras (FTMC) and supervised by prof. Arūnas Krotkus. Through the course of the project, applicant will adopt new competence, research and academic skills, and strengthen his position as the leading scientist in the newly emerging PV group.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- VALSTYBINIS MOKSLINIU TYRIMU INSTITUTAS FIZINIU IR TECHNOLOGIJOS MOKSLU CENTRAS · VilniusCoordinatorLithuania
Links
- View on CORDIS
- DOI: 10.3030/895046
- https://www.ftmc.lt/department-of-characterisation-of-materials-structure
Data: CORDIS, © European Union