Manufacturing scalability has been highlighted by UNSW Sydney researchers after a collaboration with energy technology company UtmoLight achieved a world-record efficiency for a large-area perovskite solar submodule.
The UNSW team, led by Scientia Professor Xiaojing Hao, achieved a certified stabilised power conversion efficiency of 23.5% for a 30 x 30cm perovskite submodule with an aperture area of 676cm². According to UNSW, the result improves the previous benchmark by 0.6 percentage points.
In a news release, the university said the result is significant because efficiency can become more difficult to maintain as solar devices are scaled up from laboratory cells, which are typically around 1cm², to larger areas relevant to manufacturing.
“For us, this is not only about setting another efficiency record. It is about developing materials and device concepts that continue to perform when they are translated from laboratory cells to industrially relevant areas,” Professor Hao said.
The researchers used materials innovation and a different fabrication approach to remove the need for a conventional nickel oxide layer. UNSW said nickel oxide can react adversely with perovskite materials and adds another manufacturing step, while the new approach enables a hole-selective contact to form directly during fabrication.
“Achieving high efficiency at this scale requires much more than simply transferring a laboratory process to a larger substrate,” Professor Hao said. She added that UtmoLight’s expertise in large-area processing and module fabrication had been important in translating the research into a high-performance submodule.
Perovskite is being investigated as a potential next-generation solar material because of its high light-to-electricity conversion efficiency and potential for relatively low-cost manufacturing. It can also be combined with silicon in tandem solar cells to capture different parts of the solar spectrum.
However, UNSW noted that challenges remain around the material’s stability when exposed to moisture, heat and prolonged sunlight, as well as maintaining film uniformity, controlling defects and ensuring reliable electrical connections across larger areas.
The UNSW-UtmoLight collaboration is intended to test the scalability of materials and device concepts earlier in the research and development process.
“We have been able to test our ideas to check if they can be upscaled, which means that we are not wasting our time on things that aren’t feasible,” Professor Hao said.
The researchers plan to produce a full-scale solar module with an area of 2.8m² in the coming months.
UNSW said the team is targeting an efficiency of about 18–19% for the larger module, while acknowledging that further work is required to improve efficiency, reproducibility and long-term stability before wider deployment.
