April 2020
Spotlight Summary by Mariia Kramarenko
Nanostructured front electrodes for perovskite/c-Si tandem photovoltaics
When it comes to the fabrication of the most efficient solar cells, one would consider the tandem configuration. It includes two active layers with complementary absorption spectra across the sunlight spectrum, as needed to absorb most of the solar radiation. Perovskite-silicon tandem solar cells are particularly promising, with theory predicting conversion efficiencies up to 45%. In these cells, a perovskite layer first absorbs the ultraviolet, visible, and part of the near-infrared photons. Then, a silicon layer collects the transmitted near-infrared photons. However, the experimentally reported efficiencies lag below the theoretical maximum. This is in part because a significant fraction of the incident light is reflected to the ambient at the front electrode of the cell. Researchers from Germany have made a step forward to mitigate such reflection losses by implementing a nanostructured front electrode. To fabricate such an electrode, self-assembled polystyrene nanopillars grown on a glass substrate are conformally covered with indium tin oxide. The thereby obtained textured surface acts as an effective medium with increased near-infrared transmittance, which improves light in-coupling into the silicon layer. Solar cells including the nanostructured front electrode present a 24.4% efficiency, 0.5% absolute higher than without such an electrode. The proposed structure can be optimized to be implemented in different tandem configurations.
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Article Information
Nanostructured front electrodes for perovskite/c-Si tandem photovoltaics
Ihteaz M. Hossain, Yidenekachew J. Donie, Raphael Schmager, Mohamed S. Abdelkhalik, Michael Rienäcker, Tobias F. Wietler, Robby Peibst, Andrei Karabanov, Jonas A. Schwenzer, Somayeh Moghadamzadeh, Ulrich Lemmer, Bryce S. Richards, Guillaume Gomard, and Ulrich W. Paetzold
Opt. Express 28(6) 8878-8897 (2020) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF