The first 18 months of the project have been mainly focusing on equipment installation and adaptation as well as developing manufacturing processes to produce perovskite/silicon tandem solar cells in laboratory and pilot line environments.
At the cell level, different approaches to deposit the perovskite absorber are being investigated and benchmarked by analysing the optoelectronic quality of the perovskite film, the efficiency achievable with small-scale tandem prototypes, the scalability of the process to full-size industrial Si wafers, and the applicability of the processes and associated equipment for an industrial production environment.
At the module level, the consortium has been investigating the interconnection of cells into strings and their lamination to produce modules, achieving the cell-to-module loss target defined in the project for small-scale prototypes. For this purpose, a screening of encapsulation materials has been performed. Then, encapsulated tandem solar cells have been exposed to various stability test conditions (thermal cycling, damp heat, light soaking at elevated temperature) to identify the most stable combination of materials. In addition, the outdoor monitoring of small-area tandem prototypes has also begun.
At the pilot line level, processing equipment has been installed and industrial process flows to produce tandem cells are being established. Equipment for the interconnection and encapsulation is being adapted for the application of perovskite/Si tandem module processing. Life cycle assessment and societal impact studies have also commenced.
