New Material for Solar Energy

He has been researching perovskite solar cells for over a decade: Prof. Nam-Gyu Park from Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU) in Seoul, winner of the Alexander von Humboldt Research Award, will visit the University of Stuttgart several times for shorter periods from September 2025. Together with host Prof. Michael Saliba, Head of the Institute for Photovoltaics (IPV), the chemical engineer from South Korea wants to further advance the technology.

Perovskites are not a special chemical element like silicon but rather a group of materials with a characteristic crystal structure. A major advantage of perovskite solar cells is that they are inexpensive to manufacture, efficient, and versatile. “My goal is to bring perovskite solar cells to market maturity,” says Nam-Gyu Park. To achieve this, they need to be long-term stable and scalable. A key element here is the use of nanostructured materials. These are Park’s specialty.

Prevent a Drop in Performance

Park is one of the pioneers of perovskite research and built the first functioning solar cell from perovskite. After that, he was involved in many other breakthroughs. “For example, we have improved the crystal quality and found out how to prevent the degradation of the cells caused by moisture, light, and heat.” The progress is enormous. While the efficiency of Park’s prototypes was still at 9%, perovskite solar cells are already converting around 27% of sunlight into electricity—albeit only in the laboratory for the time being. However, they still have their weaknesses when it comes to long-term stability. “To be truly competitive, perovskite solar cells would have to last as long as silicon solar cells. That is over 25 years. We’re not there yet, but we’re working on it,” says Park.

Read More: University of Stuttgart

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