Waste-based perovskite solar cell achieves 21.39% energy efficiency

A team of materials scientists and solar engineers at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, working with a colleague from Polytechnique Hauts-de-France, has developed a perovskite solar cell using a biomass-based polymer. In their paper published in the journal Advanced Functional Materials, the group describes how they used agricultural waste to make the photoactive layer of the cell, and in so doing, found that it was still energy efficient.

As the planet grows warmer due to humans emitting greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, scientists continue to look for alternatives to the major sources of these emissions. One such major source is coal-fired power plants. To reduce reliance on such plants, scientists have been looking into alternative, renewable and clean sources.

One promising source is the solar cell—it converts the energy from sunlight into electricity. Unfortunately, it is not as clean as it would seem due to the materials used in its construction. Also, some of the materials used to make them, such as silicon, are becoming scarcer and thus more expensive. This has led to efforts to replace them with cheaper and cleaner materials, such as the mineral perovskite. And while such efforts are proving worthwhile, such cells still are not as efficient as those based on silicon.

Such cells suffer from another problem as well: the photoactive layer is typically made using petroleum-based polymers, which raises questions about their sustainability and also makes producing the cells on a mass scale difficult. In this new effort, the research team has found a way to use something cleaner, a biomass-based polymer. Also, as a bonus, the biomass comes from a type of agricultural waste known as furan, making the cells even cleaner.

Testing of the cells with the biomass-based polymer showed promise—the cells made using them achieved 21.39% efficiency—still far short of the 34% achieved by cells made using non-biomass-based polymers, but more than enough to provide an incentive to continue their work. Their success, they note, will also likely open the door to other research efforts looking into finding new materials for use in producing the photoactive layer.

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