Their results were published in the journalDevicethis week.
Today, solar panels power satellites, space stations, and Mars and lunar rovers.
All these arrays are currently built on Earth and launched into space.
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They are also heavy because they use glass or a thick foil as a cover.
Its hard to justify lifting all these cells into space, he said.
Harnessing the Moons own regolith could be a game-changer.
Since moonglass is made from raw regolith, its milky-white instead of transparent, limiting its light-harvesting potential.
The best prototypes from the Potsdam team reached about 12% efficiency roughly half that of conventional perovskite cells.
But simulations suggest they could eventually match the efficiency of conventional perovskite cells.
The real challenge now, he says, is producing large quantities of the stuff outside of the lab.
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Story bySion Geschwindt
Sion is a freelance science and technology reporter, specialising in climate and energy.
