Engineering Water Repellent Coatings by Functional Nano-Sponges: a Springboard to Stable Perovskite Devices (SPIKE)

Introduction

The SPIKE project aims at realizing a revolutionary water repellent coating as a functional barrier to encapsulate photovoltaic (PV) electronic devices.

Market Context

The global solar encapsulation industry, massively pushed by the urgent increase in solar energy demand, is expected to reach $11.37 billion by 2028 with a growing rate of 14.5% during the forecast period (2021 - 2028).

Importance of Solar Encapsulation

Solar encapsulation is key to providing excellent durability to a PV module, an essential prerequisite for its commercial viability. This is particularly true for the market exploitation of any new emerging solar technologies.

Emerging Technologies

Hybrid perovskite solar is an example of a key player in emerging PVs and a potential revolutionary system for smart PV integration in everyday life, being low-cost, coloured, and flexible. However, their low durability questions their marketable appeal.

SPIKE's Objectives

SPIKE aims to solve this issue by demonstrating and bringing to the market an innovative technology based on smart nano-coatings which can revolutionize the solar encapsulation industry and beyond.

Coating Features

The coating is made of porous nano-sponges with:

• Tuneable functionality
• Transparency
• Flexibility
• Versatility
• Reduced cost

This technology overcomes the limits of the current commercial encapsulants, which are heavy, thick, costly, and involve high-temperature processing.

Goals of SPIKE

It is the goal of SPIKE to unleash the innovation potential of the proof of concept by:

1. Realizing low-cost, large area, robust coatings with a low energy consuming solution-based fabrication process.
2. Integrating them in highly efficient perovskite solar modules.
3. Demonstrating and validating a prototype in an industrially relevant environment.
4. Providing a reliable business model and market analysis to push our prototype to a commercial stage, building the bricks for the creation of a new start-up company, the ultimate outcome of SPIKE.