On December 18-21, 2019, the International Contest of Engineering Teams “Kvantoriada” was held in Moscow Central Exhibition Hall ‘Manege’. A team of students from the Moscow State University Gymnasium consisting of Svetlana Lundina, Angelica Vanina and Gleb Cherkasov has attended the competition. The head of the team is a Ph.D. student of the NMSE-Lab, Pavel Rudnev. A team member, Angelica Vanina, gave the following explanation for the chosen name: “On the one hand, the main element of perovskite is lead, and on the other, we as a team would like to be leaders of this contest. And the ‘das’ particle is just there for a cool-sounding effect”.

The MSU Gymnasium students participate in the “Flexible electronics” section, where they had presented Grätzel (dye-sensitized) and perovskite-type solar cells based on a flexible substrate. The fabrication of the devices was carried out in the NMSE Lab, whereas during the competition, the team had to improve the devices so that they would meet all the jury requirements.

he MSU Gymnasium students participate in the “Flexible electronics” section, where they had presented Grätzel (dye-sensitized) and perovskite-type solar cells based on a flexible substrate. The fabrication of the devices was carried out in the Laboratory, whereas during the competition, the team had to improve the devices so that they would meet all the jury requirements. The main difficulty was the absence of laboratory equipment, so the entire refinement was carried out using a limited set of available materials such as copper tape, conductive paste, etc. The device fabricated by the team not only met all the necessary criteria (it worked both in a bent and non-bent state, when heated to 50 °C and when cooled in a refrigerator) but also demonstrated one of the highest power outputs. For presentation purposes, the students also demonstrated that their device could power a small fan. As a result of the contest, the team became the winner and was awarded certificates and valuable prizes. However, the most important thing is that the students proved themselves as young engineers and learned how to fabricate perovskite solar cells on flexible substrates, which is an important skill both for themselves and for the NMSE Lab.