Congratulations Pubudu on Your First Publication in Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells

🎉 Congratulations Pubudu on Your First Publication in Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells! 🎉

We’re excited to share our recent publication in Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells, and even more thrilled to celebrate Pubudu’s first scientific paper during his PhD study! A huge congratulations on this important milestone!

In this work, we addressed a key challenge in fabricating high-efficiency flexible perovskite solar cells (f-PSCs). Flexible substrates like polyethylene naphthalate (PEN) are lightweight and bendable—ideal for wearable and portable electronics—but their softness and thermal expansion mismatch with other layers often result in poor film quality and device performance.

To overcome this, we developed a simple and scalable approach using Parafilm-based thermoplastic materials to temporarily attach the flexible substrate to rigid glass during processing. This method enabled the formation of smooth, high-quality perovskite films and led to solar cells with power conversion efficiencies exceeding 18% under 1-sun illumination.

We also evaluated the mechanical durability of the devices under long-term bending. Notably, concave bending resulted in only a 13% drop in performance after seven days, whereas convex bending caused a 47% reduction, primarily due to microcracks and decreased ITO conductivity.

This study presents a practical route toward improving both the efficiency and stability of flexible PSCs—key steps for real-world applications in next-generation electronics.

👏 Congratulations again to Pubudu for this achievement, and to the whole team for the successful work!

📄 Published in: Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells