The big element missing from the headline: this isn't about improving existing commercial solar cells. The caffeine improvement is specific to perovskite-based

The big element missing from the headline: this isn't about improving existing commercial solar cells. The caffeine improvement is specific to perovskite-based solar cells, rather than commercial-use silicon. Perovskite is expected to reach higher efficiencies than silicon at far lower production costs, but isn't viable because of rapid degradation and problems producing panels at scale. The good news, though, is that caffeine's improvements work on exactly those problems, raising defect-free crystal size and increasing panel longevity while in use. And it's an absolutely massive increase: the lifespan gain is more than an order of magnitude.