UNSW smashes perovskite solar cell record, predicts doubling in 12 months  

RNE has an article on another solar power research success at UNSW - UNSW smashes solar cell record, predicts doubling in 12 months.

In a presentation to the Asia-Pacific Solar Research Conference in Canberra on Friday, UNSW team leader and senior research fellow at the Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics, Anita Ho-Baillie revealed her team had achieved 12.1 per cent efficiency for a 16 cm2 cell. This gives UNSW claim to the largest single perovskite photovoltaic cell, at least 10 times bigger than the current certified high-efficiency perovskite solar cells on record, certified with the highest energy conversion efficiency. ...

Perovskite – named after the Russian mineralogist who discovered it, Lev Perovski – is a red hot area of solar research, and moving at a break-neck speed, largely because the crystal-like compound is cheap to produce and simple to manufacture. As the video below illustrates, it can even be sprayed onto surfaces.