About

The emerging photovoltaics reports initiative (EPVRI) is an academic international framework for collecting, presenting and analyzing data about the best achievements in the research of emerging photovoltaic materials, e.g., organic, perovskite and dye sensitized solar cells.

It is meant to provide a reference for good practices and state-of-the art reports, summarized in periodic publications by the EPVRI organizing consortium in the journal Advanced Energy Materials (AEM).

The focus is set on the best performing devices in terms of efficiency, flexibility, transparency and photo-stability, properly described in peer-reviewed academic publications aiming the reproducibility of the results.

Motivation

Aiming to complement NREL’s Best Research-Cell Efficiency Chart and the Solar cells efficiency tables by Martin Green et al., which list the absolute best performing certified efficiencies for each major photovoltaic (PV) technology, emerging PV reports provides an alternative reference. We summarize the best results in the PV research, as published in academic journals (certified and uncertified) and with respect to the detailed-balance efficiency limit, encouraging the reproducibility of the results. Unlike the established overviews, our new approach also deals with the best flexible, transparent/semitransparent and long-term photostable PV devices. In all cases, we also suggest protocols for best practices in characterization and reporting of emerging PV device performance.

Initiative Creation

Emerging-PV is based on an original concept by Dr. O. Almora from the year 2019. In cooperation with Dr. J. Hauch (Helmholtz Institut Erlangen-Nürnberg), Prof. T. Kirchartz (Forschungszentrum Jülich), Prof. U. Rau (Forschungszentrum Jülich) and Prof. C. J. Brabec (Friedrich Alexander Universität, Helmholtz Institut Erlangen-Nürnberg, Forschungszentrum Jülich) and with strong support and input from Dr. A. Tröger and Dr. T. von Graberg (Deputy Editor and Editor in Chief Advanced Energy Materials), the concept of Emerging-PV was created and implemented within the year 2020.

Initiating members of the Emerging PV reports initiative. From left to right: Dr. Osbel Almora, Dr. Jens Hauch, Prof. Thomas Kirchartz, Prof. Uwe Rau, Prof. Christoph J. Brabec, Dr. Anna Troeger and Dr. Till von Graberg.

Emerging PV Consortium

The emerging PV consortium is organized by an steering committee and includes a broader membership. The main tasks of the consortium include the development of the emerging-pv.org website and database, the elaboration of the “Emerging PV reports”, organization of the yearly emerging PV workshops and divulgation of their results. The initiative is intended to include researches with significant contributions in the research fields of emerging photovoltaic materials and devices at regional contexts, worldwide.

The steering committee includes Osbel Almora as Manager, Karen Forberich as Vice-Manager, and Christoph Brabec, Jens Hauch, and Thomas Kirchartz as members.

The membership of the consortium is also integrated by Derya Baran, Guillermo C. Bazan, Carlos I. Cabrera, Kenjiro Fukuda, Takao Someya, Sule Erten-Ela, Fei Guo, Anita W.Y. Ho-Baillie, T. Jesper Jacobsson, Rene A.J. Janssen, Nikos Kopidakis, Yongfang Li, Maria A. Loi, Richard R. Lunt, Xavier Mathew, Michael D. McGehee, Jie Min, David B. Mitzi, Mohammad K. Nazeeruddin, Jenny Nelson, Ana F. Nogueira, Ulrich W. Paetzold, Nam-Gyu Park, Barry P. Rand, Uwe Rau, Henry Snaith, Eva Unger, Lídice Vaillant-Roca, and Hin-Lap Yip

*Regional representation of the Emerging PV report initiative consortium (flags) over the direct solar irradiation world map (adapted with permission from https://globalsolaratlas.info CC BY 4.0)*

Contributions & Acknowledgements

We are most grateful to the international Emerging-PV consortium for their invaluable input when preparing the first version of selection rules as reported in the inauguration manuscript.
Special thanks to Dr. T. Heumueller for his most valuable input to the data templates.
The homepage, database and the interactive visualization would not have been possible without the professional assistance of Chris Berger and the countless hours he spent on this project. We also thank Odenys Almora and Yenima Hernández for their early work in the proof of concept.