To achieve this, the team engineered a new cyanate-integrated perovskite solar cell that is stable and energy efficient.
To overcome these challenges, Assistant Professor Hou Yi led a team of scientists from NUS College of Design and Engineering and Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore to demonstrate, for the first time, the successful integration of cyanate into a perovskite solar cell to develop a cutting-edge triple-junction perovskite/Si tandem solar cell that surpasses the performance of other similar multi-junction solar cells.
Further analysis of the new perovskite's atomic structure provided -- for the first time -- experimental evidence that incorporating cyanate helped to stabilise its structure and form key interactions within the perovskite, demonstrating how it is a viable substitute for halides in perovskite-based solar cells.
Encouraged by the impressive performance of the cyanate-integrated perovskite solar cells, the NUS team took their ground-breaking discovery to the next step by using it to assemble a triple-junction perovskite/Si tandem solar cell. The researchers stacked a perovskite solar cell and a silicon solar cell to create a dual-junction half-cell, providing an ideal base for the attachment of the cyanate-integrated perovskite solar cell.
Going forward, the NUS team aims to upscale this technology to larger modules without compromising efficiency and stability. Future research will focus on innovations at the interfaces and composition of perovskite -- these are key areas identified by the team to further advance this technology.Shunchang Liu, Yue Lu, Cao Yu, Jia Li, Ran Luo, Renjun Guo, Haoming Liang, Xiangkun Jia, Xiao Guo, Yu-Duan Wang, Qilin Zhou, Xi Wang, Shaofei Yang, Manling Sui, Peter Müller-Buschbaum, Yi Hou.