The research team's commercially sized indium-free tandem solar cell, which achieved a certified efficiency of 31% using abundant tin oxide in place of scarce indium. Credit: Monash University
An international team of researchers has built the first high-performance, commercial-size tandem solar cell that doesn't rely on the scarce and expensive metal indium. The breakthrough, published in Science, replaces indium-based oxide with abundant tin oxide, a material that costs 1% as much, without sacrificing performance.
The advance brings next-generation tandem solar cells a step closer to commercial production, offering the potential for cheaper solar panels that generate more electricity from the same amount of sunlight.
Scaling tandem cells beyond the lab
Yuan Cheng, a professor at Monash Suzhou and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Monash, said the milestone marks the first realization of a large-area, highly efficient indium-free perovskite tandem solar cell, showing that the technology can be scaled beyond laboratory-size devices.
