Perovskite Solar Cells

Perovskite solar cells emerged only within in the past few years. They show great technological potential, although solutions for the most urgent challenges are yet to be found. This includes the controlled and reproducible deposition of homogeneous layers by cost-effective techniques and the development of environmentally friendly material concepts to enable a sustainable energy supply in the future. We aim at gaining insight into the properties of the most efficient state-of-the-art perovskites in order to explore new materials and compounds based on the optimum material properties.

State-of-the-art metal-halide perovskite solar cells yield stable and reproducible power conversion efficiencies of 14% in our labs. The devices are fabricated in air with scalable deposition techniques such as doctor blading. New material concepts for the fabrication of perovskite solar cells are being investigated. We follow novel approaches by using nano-crystals for layer deposition. This may tackle some of the most urgent processing challenges and additionally enables new device concepts for perovskite solar cells.

To understand both the physical properties of metal halide perovskites for photovoltaic applications as well as the solution processing of perovskite thin-films, we measure morphological, optical and electrical properties of these layers on the nanometer scale. Thereby we examine the working principles of single crystallites within a polycrystalline layer and the interaction between neighbouring grains and charge transport layers.