Print solar cells at the cost of a newspaper!

Toronto, Feb 18: Researchers have found a novel way to print perovskite solar cells easily and at a cost similar to bringing out a newspaper!A team, led by Hairen Tan from University of Toronto Engineering found that the solar cells manufactured with perovskite mineral could lead to low-cost, printable solar panels capable of turning nearly any surface into a power generator."Economies of scale have greatly reduced the cost of silicon manufacturing," Ted Sargent, an expert in emerging solar technologies, said in a university statement."Potentially, perovskites and silicon cells can be married to improve efficiency further, but only with advances in low-temperature processes," added Sargent, who is also the Canada Research Chair in Nanotechnology. Perovskite solar cells depend on a layer of tiny crystals -- each about 1,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair -- made of low-cost, light-sensitive materials. Because the perovskite raw materials can be mixed into a liquid to form a kind of solar ink , they could be printed onto glass, plastic or other materials using a simple inkjet printing process."The most effective materials for making electron selective layers (ESLs) start as a powder and have to be baked at high temperatures, above 500 degrees Celsius," said Tan. Tan noted that perovskite solar cells using the older, high-temperature method are only marginally better at 22.1 per cent and even the best silicon solar cells can only reach 26.3 percent.Tan s perovskite solar cells were also stable and retained more than 90 percent of their efficiency even after 500 hours of use.