The EU-funded Luminosity project brings together research and industry partners across Europe to further develop perovskite solar cells on flexible substrates. With its expertise in anodic arc evaporation, project partner Fraunhofer FEP is making promising progress in the deposition of tin oxide and cesium iodide. These innovative technologies form the basis for the development of flexible perovskite solar cells that enable environmentally friendly next-generation solar energy. Previous projects have already shown that anodic arc evaporation can produce high-quality, droplet-free and smooth, extremely hard carbon layers (ta-C layers) for hard material coatings. The gentle deposition of transparent, conductive layers for the next generation of silicon heterojunction solar cells was also successfully carried out using anodic arc evaporation. Until now, the method could only be used for electrically conductive materials. In the Luminosity project, however, the first promising results were achieved for the deposition of tin oxide and caesium iodide.
Tin oxide is an important material for the innovative manufacturing technology for flexible solar cells being pursued in the Luminosity project. This requires protective and electrical functional layers that have to be deposited in a gentle manner - without damaging the areas underneath. The evaporation of caesium iodide shows that the deposition of the active perovskite semiconductor layer using this process could also be of great interest in the future. The innovative coating process can be easily scaled in terms of coating width by combining several evaporation modules
