Development of New Generation Solar Glasses Based on Perovskites for Applications in Building-Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV)

Grant Funding 2020-2022
Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan

The success of the projects will be useful for different novel applications, promoting advanced green technologies in Kazakhstan. The overarching purpose of this project is to pioneer construction materials towards cost-effective, self-sustainable and efficient technologies based on latest promising perovskite PVs, which weave together the expertise from physicists, chemists and electronic engineers to build advanced prototypes of solar glasses for buildings

This project is to develop state-of-the-art technologies to pursue transparent solar glasses using in the area of BIPV. It is based on perovskite solar cells (PSCs), which cause revolutionary breakthrough in the photovoltaic community due to its outstanding power conversion efficiency (PCE) and impressive device properties (low-cost, lightweight, possessing high transparency and good mechanical flexibility etc.). The developed perovskite based solar glasses can provide good solutions for the shortcomings of the conventional silicon (Si) based solar glasses, which are opaque (e.g. monocrystalline Si and polycrystalline Si) and suffering from low PCE (e.g. amorphous Si)

The success of this project will pioneer the development of PSCs in the future BIPV markets based on the following expected results achieved from this work.

i.) An optimized combination of perovskite hybrid halide perovskite materials with desired bandgaps for applications in solar glasses.
ii.) Robust hybrid halide perovskites and other functional materials for high efficiency and stability PSCs using as solar glasses.
iii.) Innovated PSC architectures for high performance solar glasses.
iv.) Establishment of the advanced material growth and device fabrication techniques for the large-scale PSC manufacturing based on the rigid and flexible substrates.
v.) Performance evaluation results of perovskite based solar glasses for indoor and outdoor applications.
vi.) The prototype of using perovskite based solar glasses to power up the devices in a bus stop.
The scientific results achieved during the project years will be published in peer reviewed journals (Q1 and Q2). At least 3 scientific papers related to the proposed topic will be committed for this project. Meanwhile, the developed technologies will be filed as provisional patents.
Achieved results:

Theoretical and experimental studies for the synthesis of a broad range of hybrid halide perovskite materials with variable bandgap sizes for transparent solar cells have been carried out. Work has been carried out to engineer the dimensionality of hybrid halide perovskite light absorbers for the enhancement of the device stability. The device architectures for high performance solar glasses have been investigated. Methods for the material growth have been investigated for scalability and good mechanical flexibility of PSCs. A systematic and detailed characterizations for degradation of the solar glasses has been carried out. Work continued on the design and prototyping of solar glasses for applications in BIPV.

We have published in 10 scientific papers, among them 7 articles in an internationally rated peer-reviewed journal with indexing in Scopus and Web of Science and 1 international conference paper. 1 article is currently under consideration for publication in international rating peer-reviewed journals, and 1 abstract is accepted, the manuscript will be sent by January.