The PEPPERONI consortium is pleased to announce the publication of a new scientific paper in Joule that provides important insights into one of the key challenges facing next-generation perovskite solar cells: accurately predicting their long-term stability under real-world operating conditions.
The publication, Accelerated aging replicates spatially non-uniform degradation modes observed in outdoor-aged perovskite solar cells, is the result of a collaboration involving several PEPPERONI partners, including Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB), one of the project’s coordinators. The research directly supports PEPPERONI’s mission to accelerate the industrialisation of high-efficiency perovskite/silicon tandem solar technology by improving the reliability and durability of these emerging PV devices.
Understanding how perovskite solar cells degrade over time is essential for developing reliable testing methods and bringing the technology to market. In the study, researchers compared solar cells that had operated outdoors for almost two years with devices exposed to different laboratory-based accelerated ageing protocols. The team found that accelerated ageing using increased light intensity successfully reproduced the same spatially non-uniform degradation patterns observed in outdoor aged devices, whereas conventional high-temperature testing did not fully capture these effects.
The study also identified three characteristic degradation mechanisms that occur during long-term outdoor operation: phase segregation, copper corrosion and edge-related degradation. In addition, the researchers demonstrated that electrical bias conditions can strongly influence degradation behaviour, emphasising the importance of selecting realistic testing conditions when evaluating new materials and device architectures.
These findings represent an important step towards more predictive accelerated ageing methodologies for perovskite PV. For PEPPERONI, they provide valuable knowledge that supports the development of more stable tandem solar cells and modules, helps optimise materials and device designs and contributes to establishing reliable testing protocols for future scale-up.