Fruitful collaboration is initiated by the SMART-ER SEED programme project “Interface-friendly hole-transporting materials for low-cost and stable perovskite solar cells (T-i-PSCer)” between researchers of Kaunas University of Technology (KTU), Linköping University (LiU), and Tampere University (TAU) for boosting the scientific excellence and innovation capacity of three ECIU universities in the development of hole-transporting materials (HTMs) for perovskite solar cells (PSCs).

There is a great probability that PSCs will occupy the photovoltaic market in the near future. Before that, the certain limitations, including the lack of cost-effective HTMs which would enable to enhance the stability of PSCs, have to be overcome. Our consortium aims to develop cost-efficient HTMs and investigate the fundamental and applied aspects of perovskite/HTM/metal interfaces in relation to device stability. The overall aim of T-i-PSCer project is to boost the scientific excellence and innovation capacity of three ECIU universities and their non-academic partner in developing interface-friendly HTMs for stable PSCs with commercial potential. The additional beneficial result of the project is the establishment of a brand-new collaboration between the three partners in the ECIU priority research area, i.e. energy and sustainability.

The improvement in excellence, capacity, and resources of the ECIU universities is reachable by the development of efficient and cost-effective HTMs for doping-free PSCs i.e., for renewable energy applications. For this, many activities are done within the frame of the T-i-PSCer project, including the joint proposal (SOL Baltic submitted for SI Baltic Sea Neighbourhood Programme), knowledge exchange; establishment of joint studies; and publication of conference/scientific papers on the research results of the project (DOI:10.1021/acsenergylett.2c02596 or DOI:10.1021/acsenergylett.2c02938), organisation of seminars (the photos below are from the joint seminar in TAU and from conferences (MAT-SUS-22 and ANM2022).