We will illustrate some experiences and projects presented at the VITE I conference in the field of extended reality technologies for public engagement and skill development. Extended technologies have many benefits when applied to educational contexts, providing immersive and engaging learning spaces, enhancing the sense of perception and grasp to the students, and thus improving the process of learning and motivation to access to science. Many speakers at the conference underlined that the lack of interest towards scientific topics and the difficulty in understanding science were the main problems they commonly encountered at public events, especially on the part of the young public. The use of extended realities can help overcome these problems, and is also effective for professional training in risky situations providing “a training platform that can be used multiple times for training, without worrying about the cost, availability, risk, and complexity of the equipment or system” (Doolani et al. (2020)). Moreover, when innovation generated by research responds to the need of the production companies, especially SMEs, the knowledge transfer generates a virtuous path, that stimulate the developement of our Country.

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Current laboratory-scale fabrication of perovskite solar cells involves the use of toxic solvents in the different fabrication steps. The aim of this research is to find a nontoxic alternative to chlorobenzene used for the deposition of hole transport material (HTM) spiro-OMeTAD. The initial selection of the solvents compatible with industrial manufacturing was performed based on the Hansen solubility model and further verified in a series of solubility tests, because the additives used in the HTM ink, such as lithium bis(trifluoromethanesulfonimidate) (Li-TFSI) and tert-butylpyridine (4-TBP), also have a significant influence on the properties of the final solution. Furthermore, selected solvents were tested on the compatibility with the underlying perovskite layer, which should remain unaffected after the spiro-OMeTAD deposition. A final selection of solvents was tested by the manufacturing of the complete perovskite solar cells. Power conversion efficiency (PCE) and layer quality, as well as possible health issues and environmental concerns, influenced the final selection for future potential industrial processing. The research demonstrated that replacement of chlorobenzene (CB) by p-xylene leads to identical PCEs of the devices, thereby showing that a toxic solvent can be replaced by a nontoxic and industrially compatible one. To prove that the selected solvent is suitable for future large-area coatings, the coatability of the ink was tested in blade-coating deposition. Devices manufactured using blade coating demonstrated identical PCEs to spin-coated devices, which is final proof of the suitability of the selected solvent system.

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The feasibility of upscaling the perovskite solar cells technologies to high volume production using roll-to-roll (R2R) slot die coating is demonstrated in this study. Perovskite solar cells are produced by R2R slot die coating on flexible substrates with a width of 30 cm and the web speed of 3–5 m min−1. R2R deposition of the electron transport layer and perovskite is performed at ambient atmosphere from nontoxic solvents compatible with industrial manufacturing. The average stabilized power conversion efficiency of the devices made on different areas of the foil is 12%, with the best value of 13.5%. The demonstrated achievement is an important milestone and a big solid step toward future commercialization of perovskite-based solar cells technologies.@en