Dr. Sahar Sam, co-founder and CEO of Solaires Entreprises, on the indoor market, the outdoor timeline, and why the efficiency race misled investors.

Perovskite has been around for roughly two decades, with lab work starting in the early 2000s and momentum building from about 2009 into 2010. University labs picked it up, and startups spun out of them.

Sam told us two things drove the interest. Perovskite contains far fewer rare metals than silicon structures and is cheaper to fabricate. And silicon PV has been almost entirely dependent on Southeast Asia for both material and manufacturing, so the prospect of a material almost anyone anywhere could make was a significant draw.

Roughly five or six years ago the field moved from research toward commercialization. "Not everything is about efficiency," Sam said, "and not everything is about being able to make everything in the lab. Most of the challenges are about scale-up, and most of the challenges are about manufacturing and reliability."

Perovskite on silicon (tandem). Layering perovskite over an existing silicon cell raises conversion efficiency. Sam noted it does not address silicon's supply chain dependency, because the silicon is still there.

All-perovskite tandem. Perovskite is a mixture of materials, and its chemistry allows for different bandgaps that absorb different parts of the spectrum. Stacking two perovskites captures a wider spectrum with no silicon involved.

Indoor. Perovskite is unstable, and outdoor exposure to sunlight, humidity and heat makes it more so. But perovskite can absorb artificial light spectra, where silicon generates very little.

Asked how close outdoor perovskite is to competing with standard silicon panels, Sam said it still has a long way to go. She is not aware of any company that has passed reliability testing and can claim 25 to 30 years of service life alongside competitive production cost.

She noted two exceptions: outdoor applications that don't require a 25- or 30-year warranty, and space, where she said perovskite can perform better than silicon. Companies are testing it, but no one has commercialized it or established it to the level of silicon has reached.

"Indoor, the environment is more forgiving, so perovskite can survive better," Sam said. She added that silicon can't compete indoors, so perovskite isn't being compared to it on performance or manufacturing cost. She called indoor the most ready market and the best bet for investment today, and said what's learned there can carry over to outdoor stability work.

The applications: anything running on a single-use battery, swapped for a rechargeable one topped up by ambient light. Sensors, smoke detectors, humidity and temperature monitors, remote controls, seasonal lighting, anything on batteries.

On economics, Sam said a keyboard with a cell might cost $20 to $50 more upfront, with the long-term return coming from batteries not bought and not sent to landfill. She expects costs to fall as manufacturing develops and volume rises.

Penetration today is minimal. Small devices that already harvest light mostly use silicon. Few companies have manufactured perovskite successfully enough to enter the market, and Sam said gaining customer trust as the first mover is the hardest part. Chinese companies are producing and selling perovskite domestically, and she expects that supply to distribute globally.

Existing equipment needs customization, and equipment makers have shifted focus to perovskite. There's no common toolset, Sam said, because companies run different chemistries in different environments, some in highly controlled cleanrooms and some in ambient conditions.

Quality control is known for silicon. For perovskite, Sam said what to check and where is still being investigated.

The same is true of testing. A decade ago there was no perovskite standard, and the industry ran silicon reliability tests on it. That has begun to change, but perovskite-specific standards haven't been around long.

For years the news flow was a record chase on efficiency, which Sam said created the impression that the highest efficiency meant the best perovskite. With commercialization, the understanding shifted: a high-efficiency cell that doesn't last isn't reliable, and stability matters more than efficiency. That disappointed investors, and capital moved to other technologies.

She added that global economic conditions, in Canada and elsewhere, left many startups short of runway, forcing layoffs and closures.

Sam said she sees high potential in perovskite beyond solar, including detection and medical devices, citing its capacity to absorb and radiate different kinds of light for applications such as X-ray detection. Those carry the same stability challenges.

Her closing note for investors: "We still need to be patient if we want to invest in perovskite."

We asked what she'd put to our next guest. Her question: What's the most exciting industry for you today, and why?

Listen to the full podcast episode here