The Fascination of Technology How Glass for Perovskite Solar Cells Can Be Produced on the Moon

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Fascination Technology: How photovoltaics makes a stable energy supply on the moon possible thanks to solar cells made of moon glass.

Putting material into space is very expensive - transporting one kilogram to the moon costs a million euros. So it makes sense to use the resources available on site. To this end, a research team led by Dr. Felix Lang, University of Potsdam, and Dr. Stefan Linke, Technische Universität Berlin, combined lunar regolith with ultra-thin perovskite to produce efficient lunar solar cells. The promising hybrid approach could enable the simple, scalable production of solar cells on the moon to supply future lunar habitats or even cities with energy.

The highlight of our study is that we can extract the glass required for our solar cells directly from the lunar regolith without any processing.

Felix Lang

Future lunar settlements will require a lot of energy. As the moon has no atmosphere, the sun is an ideal energy source for generating electricity from photovoltaics. In their study, Julian Mauricio Cuervo Ortiz from the University of Potsdam and Juan Carlos Ginés Palomares from TU Berlin and colleagues researched perovskite-based lunar solar cells that use regolith - an abundant raw material on the moon - as a carrier for the photoactive layers. This means that up to 99 percent of the weight of the materials required to produce solar cells on the moon no longer need to be transported there. The two young scientists are first authors of the article, which appeared in the journal "Device".

"The highlight of our study is that we can extract the glass required for our solar cells directly from the lunar regolith without any processing," says Felix Lang, who is responsible for the project and heads a Freigeist junior research group funded by the VW Foundation at the Institute of Physics and Astronomy. "The process is also scalable so that the solar cells can be produced with little equipment and very little energy input," he adds. The novel semiconductor material perovskite has the advantage that it can be obtained from a solution, is malleable and particularly resistant to radiation, light and temperature fluctuations, which plays a major role on the surface of the moon.

Simulation powder based on real lunar samples

Lunar regolith is a loose material consisting of broken rock and even fine dust that covers the entire moon and was formed over billions of years by meteorite impacts. It consists mainly of SiO2, Al2O3 and CaO with small amounts of metal oxides. Based on the composition of real moon samples from the Apollo missions, a regolith simulation powder was produced at TU Berlin. If it is melted, it can be used to produce glass. As the composition of the regolith varies depending on the lunar region, the glass can be lighter or darker in color. Accordingly, it is more or less permeable to sunlight.

These solar cells only require 500 to 800 nanometer thin semiconductor layers, which means that one kilogram of perovskite raw material from Earth could be used to produce 400 square meters of solar cells on the moon.

Felix Lang

Stable energy supply on the moon

The solar cells tested by the researchers have a layered structure, with the substrate and cover layer consisting of moon glass and the intermediate layer of perovskite. "These solar cells only require 500 to 800 nanometer thin semiconductor layers, which means that one kilogram of perovskite raw material from Earth could be used to produce 400 square meters of solar cells on the moon," summarizes Lang. Nevertheless, the development of the first lunar perovskite solar cell was difficult: "In the beginning, it was unclear whether we could produce them in sufficient quality on impure regolith lunar glass," he says and emphasizes the amazing stability of the solar cells produced against space radiation - an essential prerequisite for a stable energy supply on the moon.