New Solar Cells for Space

Almost all satellites are powered by solar cells – but solar cells are heavy. While conventional high-performance cells reach up to three watts of electricity per gram, perovskite and organic hybrid cells could provide up to ten times that amount. A research team from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) has now tested this type of cell in space for the first time.

×

Perovskite and organic solar cells are promising options for future generations of solar cells. Over recent years, their efficiency has rapidly caught up with that of conventional silicon-based cells. “The best perovskite solar cells currently achieve efficiency levels of 25 %,” says Peter Müller-Buschbaum, Professor of Functional Materials at the TUM Department of Physics. “These thin solar cells, less than one micrometer thick, applied to ultra-thin, flexible synthetic sheet, are extremely lightweight. They can therefore produce nearly 30 watts per gram.”

Manufacture at room temperature

This is only possible thanks to a decisive advantage of the new solar cells: Production of silicon solar cells requires very high temperatures and elaborate processes. Perovskite cells and organic semiconductors, on the other hand, can be manufactured at room temperature from solution. “These organic solutions are very easy to process,” explains the lead author Lennart Reb. “Thus the technologies open up new fields of application in which conventional solar cells were simply too unwieldy or too heavy – and that also applies far beyond the aerospace sector.”

Test flight into space

Two different types of organic and perovskite solar cells were tested in space for the first time on a research flight as part of the Mapheus 8 program at the European Space and Sounding Rocket Range in Kiruna, Sweden. The rocket reached a height of nearly 240 kilometers. “Electrical measurements during the flight and the evaluation after recovery of the rocket showed that perovskite and organic solar cells can achieve their potential in terms of expected performance in orbit height,” reports Professor Müller-Buschbaum.

Video of the flight of the Mapheus 8 rocket

The solar cells also generated electrical energy under diffuse incidence of light. “Cells turned away from the sunlight, which received only sparse lighting exclusively from the earth during the flight, still supplied electricity,” says Reb. Due to their much thinner thickness, the new solar cells could therefore also be used in much dimmer light, for example on missions to the outer solar system on which the sun is too weak for conventional space solar cells.