Surrey-led consortium given £3m funding for perovskite solar research

A consortium led by the University of Surrey has been granted almost £3m to design perovskite solar cells for use in wearables and Internet of Things devices.

Currently, crystalline silicon solar cells dominate the market – but they can’t power the portable electronics market, or the trillions of wearables and IoT devices expected to be sold in the coming years. There are already more than 20 billion IoT devices in the market, and 127 new devices are connected to the internet every second. It’s hoped that perovskite photovoltaics, made from crystals with a similar structure to calcium titanium oxide crystals, could help meet some of the demand for cheap, scalable energy sources for these technologies. 

The team led by Surrey has received £2.3m from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), and £500k from industrial partners including QinetiQ and Oxford PV to research, design, and develop flexible perovskite photovoltaics that can be made at high volume and low cost. 

“We are grateful to the EPSRC and our industrial partners for the support they have shown this project,” says Professor Ravi Silva, project lead and Director of the Advanced Technology Institute at the University of Surrey. “We are setting out to create a technology that can bridge the multi-scale energy needs of emerging markets – and beyond this, also tackle the challenge of our age: climate change. We are confident that perovskite photovoltaics are a key part of the puzzle of meeting the net-zero emission target by 2050.” 

Dr Wei Zhang, co-investigator of the project from the University of Surrey, said: “We are proud to work with some of the best research teams in perovskite photovoltaics. Success in our research will open the very large wearables and IoT power-source markets and will help power the increasing number of mobile wireless technologies.”

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