Enabling Durable Perovskite Tandems with Scalable Architecture and Manufacturing Methods

CubicPV is enabling the next leap in solar module design, increasing efficiency to extend the era of LCOE reduction for solar energy with tandem module technology. Perovskite technology has shown tremendous potential over the past decade with tandem performance approaching 35%, but not yet made a commercial impact due to lack of bankable demonstrations combining the trifecta of efficiency, durability and scalability.



This presentation will explain Cubic’s approach to decouple the perovskite and silicon to maximize each component for performance, durability, and cost with as few design constraints as possible. The resulting architecture is simpler to manufacture and will ultimately deliver better field performance than other approaches. We use accelerated aging tests that give developers the assurances they need to deploy new technologies. Beyond just passing the IEC packaging tests, we conduct light + heat testing under very aggressive conditions with 1-sun light soaking including UV at multiple temperatures up to 105°C. Custom hardware for high-throughput simultaneous testing of 1000’s of channels will be described and is being shared with our research partners to accelerate development, with the ability to measure device sizes ranging from lab pixels with 0.1cm2 active area up to Cubic’s serial modules with >1000 cm2 aperture area. These accelerated tests are correlated to outdoor performance and are used to predict field degradation rates.



Sample results include NREL-certified efficiency ~22% perovskite top cell for a high-durability device stack with transparent back contact, corresponding to tandem efficiency approaching 30%. Rigorous light + heat testing at 90°C, 1-sun, Voc conditions have demonstrated stability of L95 >1000 hours.