Encapsulated Perovskite Solar Cells Show Resilience

The first outdoor test of perovskite-and-silicon solar cells lasting more than a year shows that the cells retained over 80 percent of their initial 21.6 percent solar-conversion efficiency. The encouraging results come from tests conducted in the sunny, hot, and humid climate of the Red Sea Coast of Saudi Arabia, in what is “the longest experiment ever reported on perovskite-silicon tandem solar cells,” says Stefaan De Wolf, a material science and engineering professor at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST).

Tandem solar cells, which consist of a thin…