Perovskite Solar Cell

A perovskite solar cell is a photovoltaic device whose light absorbing layer is a perovskite structured compound, most often a hybrid organic inorganic lead or tin halide material with the characteristic ABX3 crystal structure, which can be manufactured using simple wet chemistry rather than the costly industrial processes silicon cells require; the material small exciton binding energy, long charge carrier diffusion distance and wide light absorption range together let it convert photons into electrical current efficiently even in an ultrathin film only about 500 nanometers deep. Laboratory efficiency stood at just 3.8 percent in 2009 and had reached 27 percent for a single junction cell by 2025, a jump that took perovskite technology under two decades to achieve a milestone monocrystalline silicon needed more than fifty years to reach; a silicon perovskite tandem cell has recorded 34.85 percent efficiency in the lab. Because perovskite films are cheap to produce and can be deposited from solution, the technology is being developed toward lightweight, flexible and low cost solar modules.