Publication date: 11th March 2026
Lead-based perovskites achieve high efficiencies but raise serious concerns due to toxicity, environmental risk, and regulatory barriers. This inspired alternate chemistries to develop Pb-free, stable alternative perovskites achieving commercially viable, environmentally sustainable, and regulation-compliant solar cells while maintaining acceptable performance. In today’s seminar, I will showcase two such emergent material class with potential for safer manufacturing, deployment, and end-of-life disposal. In particular, I will highlight how understanding structure-function links at the atomic-scale1 utilizing multimodal x-ray techniques holds the key to drive such materials towards PV applications.
First, we investigate the chalcogenide perovskite2 BaZrS3, which combines a direct band gap with strong light absorption and favorable transport properties. The challenge however, is adapting it to a device architecture, linked to it high formation temperature and susceptibility to surface oxidation. The talk will explore how design parameters influences optical band gap, semiconductor characteristics, transport phenomenon relating to material formation and growth, local effects in the bulk, and critical surface effects which are relevant for optimizing PV functionality (Fig.1(a)).3-5 Based on these inputs, BaZrS3 films with minimal surface contamination were fabricated and its chemistry, band alignment, and ambient stability are assessed for initial solar cell integration.
Second, we explore ferroelectric perovskite oxides, where large intrinsic polarization offers a pathway to above-band-gap photovoltages.6 Here, the main challenge is the typically large band gaps (e.g., 3.2 eV for BaTiO3), where gap reduction by chemical doping leads to severe polarization loss. Controlled Mn-Nb co-doping in BaTiO3 can achieve this balance,7 enhancing sunlight absorption via Mn3+ (dn) doping, while largely preserving initial polarization of u-ndoped BaTiO3 via Nb5+ (d0) doping (Fig. 1(b)). Element-specific disorder control is shown to enable this balance,8-9 providing a general strategy for designing low-band-gap ferroelectric absorbers for photovoltaic applications.
The authors gratefully acknowledge STandUP for Energy, the Swedish Research Council (2018-06465, 2018-04330, 2021-05932, 2022-06076, and 2023-05072), the Swedish Energy Agency (P50626-1), and FORMAS (2023-01607). This work was partially supported by the Wallenberg Initiative Materials Science for Sustainability (WISE) funded by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation.
nanoGe is a prestigious brand of successful science conferences that are developed along the year in different areas of the world since 2009. Our worldwide conferences cover cutting-edge materials topics like perovskite solar cells, photovoltaics, optoelectronics, solar fuel conversion, surface science, catalysis and two-dimensional materials, among many others.
Previously nanoGe Spring Meeting (NSM) and nanoGe Fall Meeting (NFM), MATSUS is a multiple symposia conference focused on a broad set of topics of advanced materials preparation, their fundamental properties, and their applications, in fields such as renewable energy, photovoltaics, lighting, semiconductor quantum dots, 2-D materials synthesis, charge carriers dynamics, microscopy and spectroscopy semiconductors fundamentals, etc.
International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics
International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics (HOPV) is celebrated yearly in May. The main topics are the development, function and modeling of materials and devices for hybrid and organic solar cells. The field is now dominated by perovskite solar cells but also other hybrid technologies, as organic solar cells, quantum dot solar cells, and dye-sensitized solar cells and their integration into devices for photoelectrochemical solar fuel production.
Asia-Pacific International Conference on Perovskite, Organic Photovoltaics and Optoelectronics
The main topics of the Asia-Pacific International Conference on Perovskite, Organic Photovoltaics and Optoelectronics (IPEROP) are discussed every year in Asia-Pacific for gathering the recent advances in the fields of material preparation, modeling and fabrication of perovskite and hybrid and organic materials. Photovoltaic devices are analyzed from fundamental physics and materials properties to a broad set of applications. The conference also covers the developments of perovskite optoelectronics, including light-emitting diodes, lasers, optical devices, nanophotonics, nonlinear optical properties, colloidal nanostructures, photophysics and light-matter coupling.
The International Conference on Perovskite Thin Film Photovoltaics Perovskite Photonics and Optoelectronics (NIPHO) is the best place to hear the latest developments in perovskite solar cells as well as on recent advances in the fields of perovskite light-emitting diodes, lasers, optical devices, nanophotonics, nonlinear optical properties, colloidal nanostructures, photophysics and light-matter coupling.