How Self-Healing Solar Panels Could Change Everything

Author: Matt Ferrell

Solar panels are built to last around 30 years, weathering all kinds of abuse during that time.¹ That’s a solid run for any piece of tech, but what if we could push that even further? What if solar panels could last… forever?

That’s the promise behind a new kind of perovskite PV cell that can heal itself. Not only does this self-repair help the panel bounce back from damage, but it also helps maintain peak efficiency over time. And it’s just one of several innovative paths scientists are exploring in the pursuit of perpetual photovoltaics.

Breakthroughs like this could reshape the solar industry … as long as they can break out of the lab. So, how do self-healing PVs work? And how close are we to seeing them out in the wild?

Say what you want about anti-aging products, but it turns out not all of them are snake oil… at least, not in the world of solar panels.

So, what’s the secret behind this self-healing tech? Developed by Monash University in Australia, the University of Oxford, and the City University of Hong Kong, the magic potion here is something called HUBLA. That’s short for a hindered urea bond plus a Lewis acid-based thiocarbamate bond.² It activates when exposed to stressors like heat and moisture … the same stuff that usually causes wear and tear.³ Y’know…kind of like a high-SPF sunscreen.

Why?

We’ll dive into the nuts and bolts of HUBLA soon, but first … why do we even need it? After all, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right? Solar panels already handle decades of sun-soaking like champs, so what’s the big deal?

Well, even though soaking up sunlight is literally their job, the sun still takes a toll. Over time, it wears panels down, gradually chipping away at their efficiency. And it’s not just the sun. Panels face a constant barrage of environmental hazards: hail, snow, dust, and temperature swings. On average, a solar panel loses about 0.5%⁴ to 0.8% efficiency per year.⁵

So, the goal isn’t just a longer lifespan, but a longer healthspan … making sure panels keep performing at a high level throughout their lifetime.

And when a single cell on a panel gets damaged? Replacing it isn’t really an option. This becomes even more of a problem when you look at satellites, probes, and other space-based PV tech. Up there, the sun’s rays are unfiltered by an atmosphere, and let’s face it, sending a repair crew into orbit isn’t exactly practical.⁶

To top it off, the durability that makes PVs so tough in the field also makes them hard to recycle.⁷ There are folks working on that, but for now, keeping panels in service as long as possible reduces their environmental impact, and makes them a better long-term investment.

Development

These challenges inspired the development of the first self-healing PV back in 2010, when MIT Professor Michael Strano took a page straight out of nature’s playbook.⁸

Photosynthesizing plants are surprisingly similar to solar panels. They both use sunlight to generate energy, and they’re both vulnerable to the sun’s damaging rays. In plants, the photosynthetic molecules in leaves are constantly being destroyed by sunlight. But here’s the cool part: plants replace those molecules within an hour, keeping their energy production running at full capacity day after day.⁹

Strano and his team set out to mimic that process by creating “dynamic cells.” They combined carbon nanotube scaffolding with light-sensitive proteins called phospholipids to pull it off.¹⁰ It worked as a proof of concept, though the amount of electricity generated was pretty minimal.⁹ Still, it was a fascinating and important first step.

“Nature has figured out how to work with solar energy … It makes a dynamic cell that can constantly repair itself.”⁸

More recently, researchers across the pond at the University of York discovered that the solar absorber antimony selenide has a bit of a Wolverine complex. It turns out, this material can actually regenerate itself after damage.

As research lead Professor Keith McKenna put it in 2022:

“The process by which this semi-conducting material self-heals is rather like how a salamander is able to re-grow limbs when one is severed. Antimony selenide repairs broken bonds created when it is cleaved by forming new ones.”¹¹

Though years apart, these breakthroughs helped lay the groundwork for a wave of new advancements that have emerged in just the past few years.

Breakthroughs

Perovskite-Based Self-Healing Solar Cells

With that in mind, let’s dig into what all the HUBLA hoopla is really about.

What makes our humble HUBLA so special is that it acts as a “living passivator.” A material that can actually generate new passivators through a clever bit of chemistry.² But wait… what even is a passivator?

Time for a quick PV 101 refresher: the sun blasts out photons, which hit the solar panel’s semiconductor. Ideally, those photons excite electrons enough to break free, leaving behind “holes.” If we catch those excited electrons, we get usable energy. But if they recombine with their holes before we can snag them? That energy is lost.

Here’s the problem: solar cells aren’t perfect. They’ve got tiny surface defects that act like traps, pulling electrons in and encouraging them to recombine before we can use them. That’s where a passivator comes in. It fills in those defects, smoothing things over so everything runs clean and efficiently.¹²

Perovskites, in particular, tend to come with a few of these flaws baked in. And they pick up more over time, especially out in the field. That’s why HUBLA is such a game-changer. The same stressors that usually cause damage, like heat and moisture, actually reactivate HUBLA, prompting it to patch over those defects again and again.³¹³ It’s like a photovoltaic UNO reverse card.

Here’s how Monash’s Professor Udo Bach puts it:

“By slowly releasing the passivating agents into our perovskite material, we have been able to produce solar cells not only with enhanced performance but also extended long-term stability under real-world conditions.”³

To get a better handle on what passivators do, imagine a solar panel as a road for electrons. Like any road, it can take a beating (ice, rain, wear and tear) all of which turn small cracks into full-blown potholes. Just like potholes slow down traffic, defects in a PV slow down electrons. That’s where passivators come in. They’re like road crews, patching up the rough spots so everything flows smoothly again.

And here’s the kicker: this self-healing doesn’t come at the cost of performance. In fact, it boosts it. HUBLA-treated perovskite cells reached a power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 25.1%.¹³ That’s right in the ring with traditional silicon panels, which typically land around 19% to the low 20s.¹⁴

Even more impressive? Stability. In accelerated aging tests (85°C under simulated sunlight) the HUBLA PVs held onto 90% of their efficiency after 1,000 hours.¹³ Meanwhile, the control cells without HUBLA? They dropped to just 50% after only 400 hours.² That’s a huge difference and a clear sign that this healing tech actually works.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but this could truly reshape the energy landscape … if HUBLA can clear the many hurdles standing between the lab and the real world. It’s a massive Springfield Gorge-like leap from concept to commercialization. But more on that later.

Because HUBLA isn’t the only contender in the race for the “forever” solar panel. There are other exciting strategies in the works too.

Space-Resilient Self-Healing Solar Panels

Just one state over from Monash, researchers at the University of Sydney have cooked up their own version of a perovskite-based, self-healing solar panel. But this one’s a bit different … it’s built for space. And like any good space tech, it’s a glutton for punishment … just with a more cosmic palate.

Perovskites have already shown a lot of promise for space applications. They’re significantly lighter than silicon PVs, and when you’re launching things into orbit, every gram counts.¹⁵ They also tend to outperform traditional silicon panels in terms of efficiency. But the tradeoff? Perovskites are vulnerable to moisture, UV radiation, and other environmental stressors.

Now, moisture might be a showstopper on Earth, but in space? Not so much. Organizations like Oxford PV have developed some clever workarounds for these vulnerabilities here on the ground, but space conveniently eliminates some of the biggest issues from the start.¹⁶

That said, space brings its own problems … namely, radiation. There’s no atmosphere to filter out the sun’s nastiest emissions, so space-based solar panels have to endure a relentless bombardment of protons and other high-energy particles.¹⁷ And that’s exactly where the Sydney team’s breakthrough shines.

The Sydney team developed a type of perovskite solar cell that can actually regenerate after being damaged by radiation in space. And we’re not talking about partial recovery here. These cells were able to bounce back to 100% efficiency using a process called annealing.¹⁸

So, what’s annealing? In simple terms, it’s a heat treatment. You heat a material, then let it cool down slowly. This process “relaxes” the structure allowing crystal boundaries and metal grains to realign more uniformly, which reduces internal stress. The result? A material that’s often stronger, more flexible, and more stable.¹⁹

That’s why annealing is used across industries. In aerospace, it toughens metals.²⁰ For copper wire, it improves conductivity and corrosion resistance.²¹ And in the solar world, we already use annealing to enhance the electrical conductivity of certain PV types.²²

Bonus perk: annealing works even better in a vacuum … perfect for space.

So how exactly do these space-bound solar panels heal themselves?

In their testing, the Sydney researchers found that a key layer in the solar cell, called the hole transport material, or HTM, plays a major role. Think of it like the traffic director inside the cell: it helps positive charges (those “holes” we talked about earlier) get to the right place, while keeping electrons from crashing back into them and wasting energy.²³

But under intense space radiation, this layer takes a serious hit. And here’s where things get weird. Radiation doesn’t just damage the HTM directly. It also causes a chemical inside it, called a dopant, to leak fluorine into another part of the cell. That’s like your traffic director suddenly dumping roadblocks onto the highway. Not great for efficiency.

The good news? The team found a clever workaround. By using just the right combo of materials, they discovered the solar cells could actually use the sun’s heat and radiation to clean up the mess themselves. The fluorine gets pulled back into place, and the cell essentially resets and repairs itself. No tools or technicians required.¹⁸²⁴

In fact, the panels recovered all the way back to 100% efficiency. That’s huge, especially considering that space-based solar panels can degrade by up to 10% per year.¹⁸ Those protons? Brutal.

RIKEN’s Novel Material Approach

Chemists from Japan’s RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science (CSRS) have developed their own self-healing copolymer material. One that might have a bright future in ‘forever’ PVs.

RIKEN’s copolymer and can heal, even without chomping down on moisture or radiation. It’s such a fast healer that it can recover 100% of its tensile strength within 24 hours.²⁵ It can even heal in water, acidic and alkaline solutions.²⁶ In case you’re not up to date on the properties of copolymers, that makes RIKEN’s material one tough cookie.

It’s also fluorescent. Why does this matter? Usually, the more fluorescent a material is, the better it is at preventing holes and electrons from recombining.²⁷ That means more opportunities to capture energy from excited electrons and holes. Fluorescent molecules a key part of organic PV cells, but similar materials usually die pretty quick. So, being able to combine anti-recombination powers with self-healing means this materials an excellent candidate, at least in theory, for an organic ‘forever’ PV cell.²⁵ As Masayoshi Nishiura, one of the RIKEN team members states:

“Fluorescent materials are very useful, as they can be used for organic light-emitting diodes, organic field-effect transistors, and solar cells. One of the main problems of these materials, however, is their short lifetime during usage. Our new material can be expected to afford a longer lifetime of the products and increased reliability.”²⁵

To be clear, of all the tech we’ve talked about today, this one is in it’s earliest stages of development. It’s not even being used as PV material yet. We’re just theory crafting over here. Still, this could be the first step toward the next big self-healing breakthrough.²⁸

Drawbacks & Challenges

Now, as exciting as all this sounds, there’s one big catch: nearly all of these self-healing PVs are still stuck in the lab. Sure, some have made it to the prototype stage, but for the most part, they haven’t been put through the wringer of real-world testing, especially over long periods of time.²⁹³⁰

Even if they do pass those tests, commercializing the technology is a whole different beast.

Right now, we don’t know if these PV cells can be reliably produced at scale. The perovskite research from Monash, Oxford, and Hong Kong looks promising. They showed strong performance in 1,000-hour stress tests.² But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. We’re still far from knowing whether these cells can actually last for decades out in the wild, or if they’ll truly extend a panel’s lifespan once deployed in the real world. That kind of proof takes years, sometimes decades, of testing.³⁰³¹

A less obvious but still critical step is ensuring that the new technology can be seamlessly integrated with existing solar infrastructure. It’s going make things a lot more complicated, and lot more expensive, if these self-healing panels require new infrastructure or don’t play nicely with older panels. That’s especially important in a massive solar farm.³⁰

Then there’s the money.

For self-healing solar panels to go mainstream, they’ll need to be cost-effective, and competitive with today’s tried-and-true solar tech. We’ve seen plenty of advanced solar breakthroughs come and go, not because they didn’t work, but because it was just cheaper and easier to stick with good old silicon.³⁰

That said, if self-healing tech keeps progressing the way it has been? You don’t need a crystal ball to see the potential. Longer-lasting, more efficient panels could mean lower costs, less waste, and a serious boost to clean energy adoption.

So, where does all of this put “forever” solar panels on NASA’s Technology Readiness Level (TRL) scale?³²

Most of these innovations are still early in the game. Breakthroughs like the radiation-hardened cells and self-healing perovskites have passed lab and small-scale tests, which is a solid step. But integrating them into full systems? That’s still a work in progress. And figuring out how to scale them affordably and reliably? Even more so.

Right now, most of these technologies are sitting around a 4 or 5 on the TRL scale. Validated in a lab or relevant environment, but not yet ready for primetime.

As for RIKEN’s copolymer, well, it’s a brand new development and researchers are only just starting to theorize its possible PV application. The fact that its use in PVs looks promising, but totally speculative at the moment, makes it a textbook 2 on the TRL scale.

Still, these advancements are incredibly promising and they give us a glimpse of where solar technology is headed. If progress keeps up at this pace, we might just see the first generation of commercial self-healing solar panels roll out within the next decade.

Now, that’s a big if, of course. But for something this potentially revolutionary? I’m keeping my fingers crossed.