Safer and more environmentally friendly indoor solar panels could soon help power electronics in homes and offices, say a team of UQ chemical engineers.
AIBN PhD student Zitong Wang, under the supervision of Dr Miaoqiang Lyu and Professor Lianzhou Wang, has developed a new fabrication method that eliminates the need for toxic lead and other hazardous solvents in perovskite indoor solar panels.
Indoor perovskite solar cells operate under low-intensity artificial light, such as light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and fluorescent lamps.
“Indoor solar cells themselves are not new, but the power conversion efficiency of the commercial silicon-based technology is only around 10 per cent,” Dr Lyu said.
Mr Wang developed a safe and scalable vapour-based manufacturing process for fabricating high-quality lead-free perovskite material with fewer performance-limiting defects.
Dr Lyu said halide perovskites are an emerging technology that could replace silicon, offering much higher efficiencies and commercial potential.
“However, most still rely on lead-based hazardous materials.
“The technology we developed eliminates those materials while still delivering high efficiency.”
Lead-free perovskite indoor solar cells are increasingly viewed as an alternative to coin-cell and button batteries for low-power electronics like environmental sensors, wearables, medical and health monitoring devices, and small consumer electronics.
“With suitable voltage management, these devices can replace coin cell batteries, reducing the number of small batteries that end up as waste or in children’s toys,” Dr Lyu said.
Supermarkets trialling battery-powered electronic shelf labels, which replace thousands of paper price tickets and reduce manual labour, are among the potential early applications of the technology.
Panels fabricated using the UQ process are thin, scalable and can be made on flexible plastic and in different shapes, making them easy to integrate into a wide range of products. 

Contact us via email: communications@aibn.uq.edu.au
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Using the new method, the panels achieved an efficiency of 16.36 per cent – the highest reported for this type of lead-free perovskite indoor solar cell made using an industry-compatible evaporation method.
“This material has very attractive properties that can absorb indoor light and convert very weak indoor light efficiently into electricity,” Dr Lyu said.
“By removing those solvents entirely, the process is much better suited to scalable manufacturing.”
The next step is sealing the panels before further testing.
“I think the key here is encapsulation, to protect the material from oxygen and moisture,” Dr Lyu said.
“People will probably see perovskite indoor panels and integrated consumer electronics in the market in the next few years.”
The research was published in ACS Energy Letters.
Dr Lyu is an ARC Future Fellow at UQ’s School of Chemical Engineering whose research group focuses on advanced optoelectronic materials.
Professor Lianzhou Wang is an Honorary Professor at UQ with a strong research record in functional nanomaterials for clean energy applications.
Dr Dongxu He is a post-doctoral researcher at the School of Chemical Engineering.

Contact us via email: communications@aibn.uq.edu.au
or phone: +61 414 984 324

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