Proceedings of MATSUS Spring 2025 Conference (MATSUSSpring25)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.29363/nanoge.matsusspring.2025.095
Publication date: 16th December 2024
Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) are a promising emerging technology on the cusp of commercialisation. With record power conversion efficiencies >26%, they are excellent candidates for low-cost and low-embodied energy photovoltaics. Their emergence as a promising technology is timely as we are on the brink of significant climate change and face the limits of current linear economic models. Transition is necessary to ‘circular economy’ with widespread deployment of sustainable green energy technologies. However, the deployment of green technologies, including PSCs, presents significant sustainability challenges, including availability of critical raw materials, environmental impacts of mining and production and waste generation at end-of-life.[1,2] Achieving widespread deployment necessitates a continuous supply of critical raw materials and lifecycle optimisation early in development to ensure true sustainability. This includes minimising production-related environmental impacts, developing end-of-life strategies, designing for longevity, selecting low-impact materials, and substituting primary and critical resources. Here we will discuss the work of the SPECIFIC Innovation and Knowledge Centre and the UNESCO Chair in Sustainable Energy Technologies at Swansea University, which aims to advance the sustainability, understanding and scaling of perovskite photovoltaics.[1-5] It is our contention that perovskite photovoltaics, as an emerging energy technology, have great potential to be designed for a circular economy and optimised end-of-life processing to deliver significant sustainability benefits. We will discuss opportunities for the for distributed manufacturing of perovskite photovoltaics to help transform energy access as well as assessing resource constraints and implementing circular economy strategies.[1] Early evaluation of future waste streams and materials supply issues are essential to avoid technological lock-in and ensure sustainable pathways forward.
This work was made possible by support from UKRI and the EU Horizon Europe Framework Programme (101122277), the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EP/S001336/1) and through the funding of the SPECIFIC Innovation and Knowledge Centre by EPSRC (EP/N020863/1) and the Welsh Government (CRISP22-301). Work presented has also been funded with UK aid from the UK government via the Transforming Energy Access platform.
nanoGe is a prestigious brand of successful science conferences that are developed along the year in different areas of the world since 2009. Our worldwide conferences cover cutting-edge materials topics like perovskite solar cells, photovoltaics, optoelectronics, solar fuel conversion, surface science, catalysis and two-dimensional materials, among many others.
Previously nanoGe Spring Meeting (NSM) and nanoGe Fall Meeting (NFM), MATSUS is a multiple symposia conference focused on a broad set of topics of advanced materials preparation, their fundamental properties, and their applications, in fields such as renewable energy, photovoltaics, lighting, semiconductor quantum dots, 2-D materials synthesis, charge carriers dynamics, microscopy and spectroscopy semiconductors fundamentals, etc.
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Asia-Pacific International Conference on Perovskite, Organic Photovoltaics and Optoelectronics
The main topics of the Asia-Pacific International Conference on Perovskite, Organic Photovoltaics and Optoelectronics (IPEROP) are discussed every year in Asia-Pacific for gathering the recent advances in the fields of material preparation, modeling and fabrication of perovskite and hybrid and organic materials. Photovoltaic devices are analyzed from fundamental physics and materials properties to a broad set of applications. The conference also covers the developments of perovskite optoelectronics, including light-emitting diodes, lasers, optical devices, nanophotonics, nonlinear optical properties, colloidal nanostructures, photophysics and light-matter coupling.
The International Conference on Perovskite Thin Film Photovoltaics Perovskite Photonics and Optoelectronics (NIPHO) is the best place to hear the latest developments in perovskite solar cells as well as on recent advances in the fields of perovskite light-emitting diodes, lasers, optical devices, nanophotonics, nonlinear optical properties, colloidal nanostructures, photophysics and light-matter coupling.