VATIS UPDATE Article

Solar engineers at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Australia, have scored the world’s highest efficiency rating with the largest perovskite solar cells to date – a level of efficiency the team believes it can double within another 12 months. The UNSW team has achieved 12.1 per cent efficiency for a 16 cm2 cell. This gives UNSW claim to the largest single perovskite photovoltaic cell, at least 10 times bigger than the current certified high-efficiency perovskite solar cells on record, certified with the highest energy conversion efficiency.

The team – which is part of a multi-university collaboration funded by a $3.5 million annual grant from ARENA – has also achieved an 18 per cent efficiency rating on a 1.2 cm2 single perovskite cell, and an 11.5 per cent for a 16 cm2 four-cell perovskite mini-module, both independently certified. Perovskite – named after the Russian mineralogist who discovered it, Lev Perovski – is a red hot area of solar research, and moving at a break-neck speed, largely because the crystal-like compound is cheap to produce and simple to manufacture.