Engineering wide band-gap LOW-DImensional systems for advanced perovskite optoelectronics

Descripción del proyecto

Avances clave para posibilitar futuras soluciones optoelectrónicas de perovskita

Los avances en energía fotovoltaica han hecho que la energía renovable sea mucho más sostenible, accesible, rentable y eficiente. Además, ha permitido el desarrollo y un uso más amplio de nuevas tecnologías fotovoltaicas, como la energía fotovoltaica en interiores. A pesar de estos avances, muchas tecnologías fotovoltaicas siguen teniendo dificultades para mantener conectados miles de millones de objetos, ya que los paneles fotovoltaicos de silicio u otras alternativas basadas en el carbono son demasiado voluminosos, costosos o insostenibles. El proyecto ELOW-DI, financiado por el Consejo Europeo de Investigación, desarrollará perovskitas de baja dimensión intrínsecamente estables y controlará la nucleación del material y la morfología de película delgada para optimizar la extracción de carga y minimizar la recombinación no deseada en los dispositivos. El equipo del proyecto se centrará en la dimensionalidad de la perovskita como elemento clave para aumentar la eficiencia de conversión de la luz visible y desbloquear la inestabilidad del dispositivo.

Objetivo

Engineering new solutions for powering smart portable devices is key to sustain billion-scale connected objects and to provide a greener alternative to batteries. Indoor Photovoltaics (PVs) - with a projected market of $850 million by 2023 - relying on conversion of visible indoor light- can sustain this challenge, capitalizing on the development of flexible, semi-transparent, colored and easily integrated energy generation devices.
Despite the urgency and the large market potential, current PV technologies mostly fail, leveraging on rigid and bulky systems fabricated by energy-intensive processes (i.e. Silicon PVs) or on carbon-based technologies not yet in the market for their insufficient durability.
Hybrid perovskites with wide band gap (2eV), with their easy tunability, structural flexibility, and lightweight, hold the potential for a transformative solution in visible PVs. However, lower efficiency compared to low-band gap ones, reliance on toxic elements and insufficient stability hamper their scaling up.
ELOW-DI faces this challenge by engineering the perovskite dimensionality as the key variable to unlock device instability while allowing for efficient visible light conversion. This will be obtained i) by developing intrinsically stable low-dimensional perovskites (LDPs) – leveraging on non-toxic elements and stable hydrophobic units and 2) by controlling material nucleation and consequent thin film morphology to obtain vertically oriented crystalline nanopillars, essential to ensure efficient charge extraction in the device while reducing unwanted recombination.
Upon the demonstration of the proof of concept on lab-scale, research will be moved to a completely new direction by engineering large area devices while ensuring the scalability of the nanoscale material properties. ELOW-DI is timely, and it will generate the new multidisciplinary knowledge – from material to device engineering- which is now needed for the next-gen of indoor PV solutions.