Future lunar bases 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 University of Potsdam and Juan Carlos Ginés Palomares from TU Berlin investigated, together with colleagues, Moon solar cells based on perovskite which use regolith – an abundant resource 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 today in the journal “Device” and was also mentioned in the “Nature Research Highlights”.
“The highlight of our study is that we can extract the glass we need for our solar cells directly from the lunar regolith without any processing,” says project leader Felix Lang, who leads a junior research group at the Institute of Physics and Astronomy, funded by a Freigeist-Fellowship of the VolkswagenStiftung. “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 flexible and particularly resistant to radiation, light and temperature fluctuations, which plays a major role on the lunar surface.
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 simulant was produced at TU Berlin. It can be melted to produce glass. As the regolith is composed differently depending on the region of the moon, the glass can be lighter or darker in color. Accordingly, it is more or less permeable to sunlight.
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 require ultrathin absorber layers of 500 to 800 nanometers only, allowing the fabrication of 400 square meter solar cells with just one kilogram of perovskite raw material brought from Earth,” Lang summarizes. 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 solar and cosmic radiation – an essential prerequisite for a stable energy supply on the moon.
Link to Publication: Julián Mauricio Cuervo-Ortiz, Juan Carlos Ginés Palomares, Sercan Ozen, Enrico Stoll, Stefan Linke, Felix Lang, et al. (2025), Moon photovoltaics utilizing lunar regolith and halide perovskites, Device, https://www.cell.com/device/fulltext/S2666-9986(25)00060-2
Link to junior research group of Dr. Felix Lang:https://www.uni-potsdam.de/en/pwm/rosi-group
Link to VolkswagenStiftung Story: https://www.volkswagenstiftung.de/en/news/story/perovskite-pioneer-how-freigeist-fellow-revolutionising-solar-cells-and-x-ray-devices
Link to research group Exploration & Propulsion of TU Berlin: https://www.tu.berlin/en/raumfahrttechnik/research/working-groups/ag-exploration-propulsion
Image 1: Production of solar cells on the Moon (artwork). Image: Sercan Özen.
Image 2:Components of a Moon solar cell. Image: Felix Lang.
Image 3:Team Photo: Juan Carlos Ginés Palomares (left), Felix Lang (center), Julian Mauricio Cuervo Ortiz (right). Image: Thee Vanichangkul.
Contact:
Dr. Felix Lang, Institute of Physics and Astronomy
Tel.: +49 331 977-5630
E-Mail: felix.lang.1uuni-potsdampde
Media Information 03-04-2025 / Nr. 034