It is established that fossil fuels enabled a huge global economic growth although resulted to a fragile equilibrium between fuel prices and economic development, an unsustainable exploitation of the natural resources and prompted the ongoing environmental and societal crisis. Solar-driven energy production is pivotal for glass-architecture buildings, public transportation, domestic/ corporate roof-tops/windows and rural areas (i.e. greenhouses); oriented to EU policies for Decarbonization of the EU building stock and European Green Deal for efficient, clean and cheap energy. In the last 15 years, solution-processable metal halide perovskite solar cell (PSCs) technology, the most prominent alternative to the dominant (95% market stake) 1st generation silicon-based photovoltaics (PVs), has emerged.
To accelerate the integration of cost-effective PSCs in the market, current drawbacks need to be resolved. The Halocell project addressed the three main issues that humper the wide adoption of this new technology: the instability in prolonged environmental exposure (moisture, oxygen, irradiation), the toxic nature of some of the employed metals and iii) material imperfections. A new strategy utilizing supramolecular interactions (fluorine-fluorine interactions, halogen bonging) has been implemented and contributed to novel design principles to stabilize the materials at environmental conditions, compensate their toxicity and control their structural properties on-demand.
