New solar cells hit 30% efficiency and still work after 1,000 hours of power

New solar cells hit 30% efficiency and still work after 1,000 hours of power

The team developed a chemical-hardness strategy to control crystal growth.

Georgina Jedikovska | interestingengineering.com | May 07, 2026

Chinese scientists have pushed perovskite tandem solar cells past the critical 30 percent efficiency mark after developing a new way to control how the materials crystallize during manufacturing.

The research team was led by Ge Ziyi, PhD, and Liu Chang, PhD, from the Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering (NIMTE), under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). The team hit a certified power conversion efficiency of 30.3 percent in rigid all-perovskite tandem solar cells, and 28 percent in flexible versions.

They believe that the achievement can speed up the development of lightweight, high-efficiency solar technologies that are far cheaper and easier to manufacture than traditional silicon-based panels.

“The findings provide a pathway to simultaneously improve efficiency and durability in both rigid and flexible devices, thereby advancing the development of lightweight, scalable photovoltaic technologies,” the scientists pointed out...more
https://interestingengineering.com/energy/all-perovskite-solar-cell-efficiency-past-30



The study has been published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
Chemical hardness engineering synchronizes crystallization in perovskite tandems

Abstract
All-perovskite tandem solar cells are constrained by asynchronous crystallization in multicomponent perovskites, which produces vertical compositional gradients, structural inhomogeneity and excessive non-radiative recombination. These effects arise from mismatched coordination and crystallization kinetics among mixed halides and Pb2+/Sn2+ cations...



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