Researchers from the Institute of Materials Science of Seville (ICMS), part of cicCartuja, have established optimized guidelines for the manufacture of perovskite-type solar cells that theoretically triple the efficiency of the original ones.

Sol Carretero-Palacios, Alberto Jiménez-Solano and Hernán Míguez —belonging to the group of multifunctional optical materials— achieve this increase in efficiency by integrating metallic nanoparticles into the absorbent layer based on compounds with a perovskite-type structure.

Compounds that have a perovskite-type crystalline structure, such as lead methylammonium iodide, have had a notable development in recent years as absorbent materials in photovoltaic cells. In this context, ICMS researchers have presented a guide for integrating metallic nanoparticles into the absorbent layer to reduce the amount of active material in the device and to improve its capacity to capture sunlight.

The reduction in the thickness of the perovskite layer is also very important in environmental terms, since lead (a heavy metal) is one of the constituent elements of these perovskites.

Finally, it is worth highlighting the social relevance of this research, since in recent years compounds with a perovskite-type crystalline structure have allowed the development of photovoltaic devices with efficiencies of over 20% and with a low manufacturing cost. However, this material has not yet reached its efficiency ceiling and there are many avenues being explored to increase its performance.

The results have been published in the form of a perspective in the first issue of the journal ACS Energy Letters, and the work has been highlighted as one of the 20 most read articles of the last three months. The reference of the complete publication is: Sol Carretero-Palacios, Alberto Jiménez-Solano and Hernán Míguez. Plasmonic Nanoparticles as Light-Harvesting Enhancers in Perovskite Solar Cells: A User’s Guide ACS Energy Lett., 2016, 1 (1), pp 323-331.