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| Polish physicist and businesswoman Olga Malinkiewicz poses with a printed solar panel (AFP Photo/Janek SKARZYNSKI) |
Wroclaw (Poland) (AFP) - What if one day all buildings could be equipped with windows and facades that satisfy the structure's every energy need, whether rain or shine?
That
sustainability dream is today one step closer to becoming a reality thanks to
Polish physicist and businesswoman Olga Malinkiewicz.
The
36-year-old has developed a novel inkjet processing method for perovskites -- a
new generation of cheaper solar cells -- that makes it possible to produce
solar panels under lower temperatures, thus sharply reducing costs.
Indeed,
perovskite technology is on track to revolutionise access to solar power for
all, given its surprising physical properties, some experts say.
"In
our opinion, perovskite solar cells have the potential to address the world
energy poverty," said Mohammad Khaja Nazeeruddin, a professor at
Switzerland's Federal Institue of Technology Lausanne, an institution on the
cutting-edge of solar energy research.
Solar
panels coated with the mineral are light, flexible, efficient, inexpensive and
come in varying hues and degrees of transparency.
They can
easily be fixed to almost any surface -- be it laptop, car, drone, spacecraft
or building -- to produce electricity, including in the shade or indoors.
Though the
excitement is new, perovskite has been known to science since at least the
1830s, when it was first identified by German mineralogist Gustav Rose while
prospecting in the Ural mountains and named after Russian mineralogist Lev
Perovski.
In the
following decades, synthesising the atomic structure of perovskite became
easier.
But it was
not until 2009 that Japanese researcher Tsutomu Miyasaka discovered that
perovskites can be used to form photovoltaic solar cells.
'Bull's
eye'
Initially
the process was complicated and required ultra high temperatures, so only
materials that could withstand extreme heat -- like glass -- could be coated
with perovskite cells.
This is
where Malinkiewicz comes in.
In 2013,
while still a PhD student at the University of Valencia in Spain, she figured
out a way to coat flexible foil with perovskites using an evaporation method.
Later, she
developed an inkjet printing procedure that lowered production costs enough to
make mass production economically feasible.
"That was a bull's eye. Now high temperatures are no longer required to coat things with a photovoltaic layer," Malinkiewicz told AFP.
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The panels
can easily be fixed to almost any surface (AFP Photo/Janek SKARZYNSKI)
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"That was a bull's eye. Now high temperatures are no longer required to coat things with a photovoltaic layer," Malinkiewicz told AFP.
Her
discovery quickly earned her an article in the journal Nature and media
attention, as well as the Photonics21 Student Innovation award in a competition
organised by the European Commission.
The Polish
edition of the MIT Technology Review also selected her as one of its Innovators
Under 35 in 2015.
She went on
to cofound the company Saule Technologies -- named after the Baltic goddess of
the sun -- along with two Polish businessmen.
They had to
assemble all their laboratory equipment from scratch, before multimillionaire
Japanese investor Hideo Sawada came on board.
The company
now has an ultra-modern laboratory with an international team of young experts
and is building an industrial-scale production site.
"This
will be the world's first production line using this technology. Its capacity
will reach 40,000 square metres of panels by the end of the year and 180,000
square metres the following year," Malinkiewicz said at her lab.
"But
that's just a drop in the bucket in terms of demand."
Eventually,
compact production lines could easily be installed everywhere, according to
demand, to manufacture perovskite solar panels that are made to measure.
Self-sufficient buildings
The Swedish
construction group Skanska is testing the cutting-edge panels on the facade of
one of its buildings in Warsaw.
It also
inked a licencing partnership with Saule in December for the exclusive right to
incorporate the company's solar cell technology in its projects in Europe, the
United States and Canada.
"Perovskite
technology is bringing us closer to the goal of energy self-sufficient
buildings," said Adam Targowski, sustainability manager at Skanska.
"Perovskites
have proven successful even on surfaces that receive little sunlight. We can
apply them pretty much everywhere," he told AFP.
"More
or less transparent, the panels also respond to design requirements. Thanks to
their flexibility and varying tints, there's no need to add any extra
architectural elements."
A standard
panel of around 1.3 square metres, at a projected cost of 50 euros ($57), would
supply a day's worth of energy to an office workstation, according to current
estimates.
Malinkiewicz
insists that the initial cost of her products will be comparable to
conventional solar panels.
Perovskite
technology is also being tested on a hotel in Japan, near the city of Nagasaki.
Plans are
also afoot for the pilot production of perovskite panels in Valais, Switzerland
and in Germany under the wings of the Oxford Photovoltaics venture.
"The
potential of the technology is clearly enormous," Assaad Razzouk, the CEO
of Singapore-based Sindicatum Rewable Energy, a developer and operator of clean
energy projects in Asia, told AFP.
"Just
think of all the buildings one could retrofit worldwide!"
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