Traditional solar cells are made from silicon, which has good efficiency and stability but is relatively expensive to make and can only be manufactured in stiff panels.
Perovskite solar cells are an alternative that can be printed from inks, making them low cost, high efficiency, thin, lightweight and flexible. However, they have trailed behind silicon solar cells in efficiency and are prone to breaking down under normal environmental conditions.
New metal-containing materials called ferrocenes could help to alleviate many of these issues.
Professor Nicholas Long, co-lead author on the study, said: “Silicon cells are efficient but expensive and we urgently need new solar energy devices to accelerate the transition to renewable energy.
“Stable and efficient perovskite cells could ultimately allow solar energy to be used in more applications – from powering the developing world to charging a new generation of wearable devices.”
Perovskite forms the ‘light...