The Light Management in New Photovoltaic Materials (LMPV) Center at AMOLF starts a new solar consortium on perovskite solar foils by roll-to-roll manufacturing, which has recently been funded by NWO’s Knowledge and Innovation Covenant (KIC). The grant has been awarded as part of the ‘Innovations for wind and solar energy’ thematic call for proposals. The consortium consists of a mix of academic organizations and small and medium-sized enterprises including Delmic – CL solutions. The total grant amount is 1,5 million euro.   

Fundamental research

The project targets materials research aimed at the creation of halide perovskite tandem solar foils with sunlight to electricity conversion efficiency beyond 25% using an innovative environmentally-friendly manufacturing process. The researchers will develop sustainable and scalable fabrication technologies to synthesize two missing parts for the fabrication of perovskite solar tandem foils: the low-bandgap perovskite material and the accompanying transport layers. To reduce the use of toxic lead, they will fabricate stable tin-based low-bandgap halide perovskite films with optimized photovoltaic conversion efficiency. 

From science to society

In addition to the scientific plans, the consortium will also investigate future valorization opportunities. This means carrying out an integrated economic analysis of the newly developed technology and performing a life-cycle analysis for the new materials targeted at circular products. Moreover, roll-to-roll processing based on perovskite thin films has the potential to be scaled up to a speed that is 100 times faster than conventional silicon solar cell manufacturing. Therefore, the consortium will focus on upscaling lab-scale experiments to roll-to-roll processing. 

Parties involved in the PerFoRM (Perovskite Foils by Roll-to-roll Manufacturing) consortium are NWO institute AMOLF, University of Amsterdam (UvA), TNO Energy Transition - Solliance, VDL Enabling Technologies Group, SALDtech, HyET Solar, Delmic - CL Solutions, and Roland Berger Consulting.

From left to right: Tom Veeken, Sjoerd Veenstra, Albert Polman, Sorin Stan, Paul Poodt, Erik Garnett, Toon Stilma, Toon Coenen, Ilker Dogan, Bruno Ehrler, Herbert Lifka, and Esther Alarcón Lladó.

To read more about NWO and KIC projects, please visit the website.