Oxford PV is a spin-off from Oxford University, a technology start-up business that has exclusively licensed and is developing a PV technology with the potential to deliver low-cost, efficient solar cells that can be readily incorporated into glass building facades. The company’s scale-up and commercialization of its flat junction, perovskite solar cell being developed at its development facility near Oxford has established a new high of 15.4 percent efficiency. Furthermore, the new test results have been achieved without using Mesoporous Titanium Dioxide (TiO2) as a semiconductor, thereby allowing a more efficient conversion of energy with enhanced stability.
The new development, in association with the large area manufacturing process and use of abundant and extremely low-cost materials, will help Oxford PV to overcome the challenges of reliability, performance and cost often experienced within the PV sector.
“Our plan was to continuously optimise our perovskite solar cells towards a goal of more than 20% efficiency but these results are ahead of expectations” said Dr Henry Snaith, Oxford PV’s founder and Chief Scientific Officer. “I see no reason why we can’t aim higher now and accelerate the transfer of our technology into production.”
The company is supported by £4.2 million of equity and grant funding and is moving swiftly towards the manufacture and delivery of larger modules that meet internationally accepted standards and specifications for PV products. The primary objective is to deliver a massively scalable product for the Building Integrated Photovoltaic (BIPV) market and then subsequently, as energy conversion performance improves, for other high-volume PV applications.
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