Self-assembling Perovskite Absorbers - Cells Engineered into Modules (SPACE-Modules)

气候变化通过改变天气模式影响到地球上的每一个人，特别是导致极端天气的发生增加，例如，极端天气可能导致强降雨导致洪水或长时间缺雨导致干旱。气候变化是由大气中温室气体（如二氧化碳）浓度的增加所驱动的，这些气体捕获了原本会从地球表面散失的热量。向大气中增加二氧化碳的最大来源是燃烧化石燃料以产生能量（例如，在燃煤或燃气发电站和/或内燃机或汽车/卡车/公共汽车等中发电）。气候变化可以说是人类目前面临的最大、最紧迫的挑战。矛盾的是，全球社会正在迅速扩张，社会希望使用越来越多的能源，与此同时，我们必须紧急和显著减少与能源有关的温室气体的排放量。与此同时，能源成本呈上升趋势，预计在可预见的未来将继续上升。答案是可再生能源，即在没有温室气体排放的情况下可持续地生产能源。然而，当前和预计的能源需求是巨大的，因此全球可再生能源发电的所需规模必须与此相匹配。最可能的情况是，未来的能源生产将依赖于各种可再生能源（如风能、水力发电、生物质能、太阳能）的拼凑，当另一种能源发电量不佳时，一种能源会填补空缺。然而，这仍然必须以客户可以负担得起的成本生产。当考虑到太阳能时，每天有大量剩余的太阳能落在地球表面（大约是全球年能源消耗的6000倍）。这表明，对于效率为10%的太阳能电池，用太阳能电池板覆盖0.2%的地壳就能满足能源需求。因此，主要的挑战是能够制造足够规模的太阳能电池来满足这种能源需求。目前，大约90%的太阳能电池组件是晶体硅（cSi），它们夹在两片玻璃之间，然后用螺栓固定在屋顶表面的框架上，或者安装在太阳能农场的地板上。cSi模块的问题在于，它们是采用批量生产工艺生产的，这涉及到大量员工，这使得英国更难与之竞争，因为我们的劳动力成本往往更高。为了与cSi竞争，新的太阳能电池技术必须以合适的价格提供给客户。它们还必须含有低蕴含能量（即制造它们所需的能量）。结合这两个因素将降低客户的初始成本，这将增加吸收。它还将显著缩短偿还时间；也就是说，在客户节省足够的能源费用来支付最初的购买成本之前，必须安装太阳能电池的时间。钙钛矿太阳能电池（本研究的主题）是由牛津大学的Snaith教授于2012年发现的。这些设备为大规模太阳能电池的吸收提供了巨大的潜力，因为它们非常有效地将太阳能转化为电能，而且所有的设备组件都很丰富。该设备组件也可以打印到柔性基材上，这意味着该技术应该适用于卷对卷加工，这种加工不需要劳动密集型，而且可以非常快速。将设备印刷到柔性基材上意味着也应该有可能将这些设备集成到商业产品中；例如，用于移动设备充电，如移动电话或到建筑物的外部，在使用点产生能量。

Climate change affects everyone on the planet through changing weather patterns particularly leading to increased occurrence of extreme weather which can, for instance, result in very intense rainfall leading to flooding or prolonged absence of rain leading to drought. Climate change is driven by increased atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases (e.g. carbon dioxide) which trap heat which would otherwise be dissipated away from the planet's surface. The biggest source of increasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is the burning of fossil fuels to generate energy (e.g. to generate electricity in coal or gas-fired power stations and/or in the internal combustion engines or cars/lorries/buses etc.). Climate change is arguably the biggest and most urgent challenge currently facing humankind. The paradox is that global society is expanding rapidly and that society wants to use ever increasing amounts of energy whilst, at the same time, we must urgently and significantly reduce the amount of energy-related greenhouse gases we are releasing. At the same time, energy costs are on an upward trend which is predicted to continue for the foreseeable future. The answer is renewable energy whereby energy is sustainably generated with no greenhouse gas emissions. However, current and predicted energy demand is huge and so the required scale of global renewable energy generation must match this. The most likely scenario is that future energy generation will rely on a patchwork of renewable energy sources (e.g. wind, hydroelectric, biomass, solar) with one energy source picking up the slack when another is generating poorly. However, this must still be produced at a cost that the customer can afford.When considering solar energy, there is huge surplus falling on the Earth's surface every day (approximately 6,000 times more than annual global energy consumption). This suggests that for 10% efficient solar cells, covering 0.2% of the crust with solar panels would meet energy demand. Hence, the primary challenge is to be able to manufacture solar cells at sufficient scale to meet this energy demand. Currently, about 90% of solar cell modules sold are crystalline silicon (cSi) which are sandwiched between two sheets of glass and then either bolted to frames on roof surfaces or floor mounted in solar farms. The problems with cSi modules are that they are manufactured using batch processes, which involves a lot of staff which makes it harder for the UK to compete because our labour costs tend to be higher. For new solar cell technologies to compete with cSi, they must be available at the right cost to the customer. They must also contain low embodied energy (that is the energy which is takes to manufacture them). Combining these two factors will reduce the initial cost the customer which will increase uptake. It will also significantly reduce pay-back times; i.e. the time the solar cells must be installed before the customer has saved enough money on their energy bills to have paid off the initial purchase costs.Perovskite solar cells (the subject of this research) were discovered by Professor Snaith at Oxford University in 2012. These devices offer great potential for very large scale solar cell uptake because they convert solar energy to electricity very efficiently and all the device components are abundant. The device components are also printable onto flexible substrates, which means that this technology should be suitable for roll-to-roll processing which is not labour intensive and which can be very rapid. Printing devices onto flexible substrates means that it should also be possible to integrate these devices into commercial products; for instance for mobile device charging such as mobile phones or onto the outside of buildings to generate energy at the point of use.