Like with many new technologies, there is a difference between what works in the laboratory at small-scale and in the factory at large-scale. Looking at perovskites as a material, it has its own challenges. Particularly, it has the tendency to be a bit unstable at high temperature and susceptible to moisture. These are challenges that could cause the decomposition of cells.
Perovskit solar cells have been tremendously advanced in few yours such that conversation efficiency as high as 20 percent and more has been reported. Perovskits have high absorption coefficient and band near the optimum value for the theological efficiency. But as it has organic part it suffers from low reliability at this time. Efforts will be spent to make them reliable and stable under working operating conditions.
But i think there is a very serious competitor which is prevailing the market of the solar cells. It is the single Crystal solar cells. There is serious research effort to produce thin film crystalline solar cells with only about 10-30 um thickness. The efficiency of such sol arc ells will be about the same as the thick wafer Si solar cells. This would be a tremendous saving of the material and thereby the cost of solar ells. As consequence it is so that silicon will also prevail in the future.
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It's really hard to forecast things 30 years from now, even 15 yeras, I think.
Have a look back over the developments of perovskite solar cells (2009~now) and you can see that the speed of development is so fast only during 9 years! It's certain that new technologies would emerge in short times which can influence the solar applications of Si and perovskites.
For compound semiconductor perovskite, the components are more adjustable to fit the needs in solar technology. I'd rather suppose perovskite will be more prevailing, and Si also indispensable in certain areas.
Thank you Prof. Abdelhalim for your insightful contribution.
In my opinion, If the above challenges of scale up and stability can be prevailed over, then Perovskite solar cells will have the possibility of changing the economics of solar power. This is because the production of Perovskite cells is far cheaper when compared to silicon cells. This possibly will be way for the novel material to cut in on the silicon-dominated market.
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