A 2-terminal perovskite/silicon multijunction solar cell enabled by a silicon tunnel junction

Mailoa, Jonathan P.; Bailie, Colin D.; Johlin, Eric; Hoke, Eric T.; Akey, Austin; Nguyen, William; McGehee, Michael D.; Buonassisi, Tonio

doi:10.1063/1.4914179

Cited by 541 publications

(469 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…[ 80,81 ] Mailoa et al made a monolithic tandem cell (Figure 7 c) by introducing a silicon tunnel junction between the perovskite and silicon sub-cells. [ 80 ] The tandem cell gave a PCE of 13.7%, which is still lower than the record effi ciency for perovskite or Si single junction cells. It is hard to make high effi ciency sub-cells in a tandem structure, which can work as good as the single junction cells.…”

Section: -Terminal Tandem Cellsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Advances in Perovskite Solar Cells

et al. 2016

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widely commercialized, but possiblities to increase their performance are limited, because nowadays the so-called balance of systems (BoS) cost of PV modules makes up most of the cost. [ 1 ] As much of the BoS scales with area, performance improvement seems the only way to decrease the cost of PV power further. Therefore, new PV cells are sought either to allow for higher effi ciencies than what is possible with Si PV without cost increase, or, as explained in section 3.4, to provide lowcost added effi ciency to Si PV. Emerging solar cells such as dye-sensitized, bulkheterojunction and quantum-dot solar cells can be fabricated via low-temperature solution processing, that holds promise for low-cost large scale application, but best power conversion effi ciencies (PCE) are half of, or less than that of the best commercial Si PV cells. [ 2 ] This is where perovskite solar cells enter, as for the fi rst time in PV history it is possible to produce high-effi ciency cells at low monetary and energy costs, with apparent ease of fabrication from earth-abundant, readily available raw materials. The PCE for perovskite solar cells has increased from 2.2% to 20.1% since 2006, showing an inviting vista of commercialization. [ 3,4 ] Perovskite solar cells are named after the crystal structure of the light absorbers, the structure of the mineral CaTiO 3 . Many compounds with ABX 3 stoichiometry take this structure, where A and B are 12-and 8-coordinates cations, respectively, and X is the anion. [ 4 ] Of the many ABX 3 only few are suitable to be efficient light absorbers for solar cells due to requirements such as appropriate bandgap for good light-harvesting ability, energy level/band alignment with contacting materials, long charge carrier lifetime, τ, and high mobility, µ. Perovskites generally have divalent anions, and the strong electrostatic bonding mostly makes their (high) bandgaps not suitable for solar PV. Mitzi et al. initiated using perovskites containing halides, ammonium cations and Sn 2+ in optoelectronic devices, which formed the basis for the development of perovskites for solar cells. [ 5 ] Here we will focus on such halide perovskites, together with one divalent (Pb 2+ ) and one monovalent (mostly CH 3 NH 3 + ) cation. The most effi cient halide perovskite solar absorbers consist of organic ammonium ions (CH 3 NH 3 + or NH = CHNH 3 + ), Pb 2+ and halide ions (I − , Br − ).[ 4 ] CH 3 NH 3 PbI 3 possesses broad and intense light absorption. It is an ambipolar semiconductor (can be n-or p-type), and its charge carriers can have long diffusion lengths and lifetimes, which allow excellent PCE for solar cells made with it. [3][4][5][6] Another advantage of perovskite absorbers is the low-temperature solution-processing ability, which helps

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Section: -Terminal Tandem Cellsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Advances in Perovskite Solar Cells

et al. 2016

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“…Using a four terminal configuration, Bailie et al 20 obtained a 17% and 18.6% efficient tandem cell with mc-Si ( ) and copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS, ) bottom cells, respectively. Similarly, Löper et al 21 obtained a 13.4% efficient tandem cell with presumably a highly efficient a-Si:H/c-Si heterojunction bottom cell using the same configuration and Mailoa et al 22 obtained a 13.7% efficient cell with c-Si bottom cell using the two terminal configuration. These studies indicate that a poor performing top cell can significantly limit the performance of these traditional tandem cell designs.…”

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confidence: 99%

Bifacial Si heterojunction-perovskite organic-inorganic tandem to produce highly efficient (ηT* ∼ 33%) solar cell

Asadpour

Chavali

Khan

et al. 2015

Applied Physics Letters

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As single junction thin-film technologies, both Si heterojunction (HIT) and Perovskite based solar cells promise high efficiencies at low cost. One expects that a tandem cell design with these cells connected in series will improve the efficiency further. Using a self-consistent numerical modeling of optical and transport characteristics, however, we find that a traditional series connected tandem design suffers from low due to band-gap mismatch and current matching constraints. It requires careful thickness optimization of Perovskite to achieve any noticeable efficiency gain. Specifically, a traditional tandem cell with state-of-the-art HIT () and Perovskite ( ) sub-cells provides only a modest tandem efficiency of 25%. Instead, we demonstrate that a bifacial HIT/Perovskite tandem design decouples the optoelectronic constraints and provides an innovative path for extraordinary efficiencies. In the bifacial configuration, the same state-of the-art sub-cells achieve a normalized output of =33%, exceeding the bifacial HIT performance at practical albedo reflections. Unlike the traditional design, this bifacial design is relatively insensitive to Perovskite thickness variations, which may translate to simpler manufacture and higher yield.

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“…Since the top and bottom cells are electrically connected in series, it follows that current generation within both the top and bottom cells must be equal-a constraint known as current matching [9]. The first twoterminal perovskite/Si tandem cell appeared in 2015 and obtained a relatively low PCE of 13.7% due to the current mismatch issue and parasitic absorption [11]. By using a heterojunction bottom Si cell and optimized layer thicknesses, the PCE has been raised to 21.2% in 2016 [12].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Simultaneously, the Si solar cells have dominated the photovoltaic markets for a long time, and the PCE record of the single-junction Si solar cell has reached 26.6% [8], but the relatively high manufactur-ing cost limits their wider applications. In recent years, the perovskite/Si tandem solar cells [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24] have attracted increasing interest as they possess great commercial possibility in fabricating high-performance solar cells via the cost-effective pathway.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Efficient Semitransparent Perovskite Solar Cells Using a Transparent Silver Electrode and Four-Terminal Perovskite/Silicon Tandem Device Exploration

Chen

Pang

Zhang

et al. 2018

Journal of Nanomaterials

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Four-terminal tandem solar cells employing a perovskite top cell and crystalline silicon (Si) bottom cell offer a simpler pathway to surpass the efficiency limit of market-leading single-junction silicon solar cells. To obtain cost-effective top cells, it is crucial to develop transparent conductive electrodes with low parasitic absorption and manufacturing cost. The commonly used indium tin oxide (ITO) shows some drawbacks, like the increasing prices and high-energy magnetron sputtering process. Transparent metal electrodes are promising candidates owing to the simple evaporation process, facile process conditions, and high conductivity, and the cheaper silver (Ag) electrode with lower parasitic absorption than gold may be the better choice. In this work, efficient semitransparent perovskite solar cells (PSCs) were firstly developed by adopting the composite cathode of an ultrathin Ag electrode at its percolation threshold thickness (11 nm), a molybdenum oxide optical coupling layer, and a bathocuproine interfacial layer. The resulting power conversion efficiency (PCE) is 13.38% when the PSC is illuminated from the ITO side and the PCE is 8.34% from the Ag side, and no obvious current hysteresis can be observed. Furthermore, by stacking an industrial Si bottom cell (PCE = 14.2%) to build a four-terminal architecture, the overall PCEs of 17.03% (ITO side) and 11.60% (Ag side) can be obtained, which are 27% and 39% higher, respectively, than those of the perovskite top cell. Also, the PCE of the tandem cell has exceeded that of the reference Si solar cell by about 20%. This work provides an outlook to fabricate high-performance solar cells via the cost-effective pathway.

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A 2-terminal perovskite/silicon multijunction solar cell enabled by a silicon tunnel junction

Cited by 541 publications

References 32 publications

Advances in Perovskite Solar Cells

Advances in Perovskite Solar Cells

Bifacial Si heterojunction-perovskite organic-inorganic tandem to produce highly efficient (ηT* ∼ 33%) solar cell

Efficient Semitransparent Perovskite Solar Cells Using a Transparent Silver Electrode and Four-Terminal Perovskite/Silicon Tandem Device Exploration

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