Highly Efficient Hybrid Polymer and Amorphous Silicon Multijunction Solar Cells with Effective Optical Management

Abstract

Highly efficient hybrid multijunction solar cells are constructed with a wide‐bandgap amorphous silicon for the front subcell and a low‐bandgap polymer for the back subcell. Power conversion efficiencies of 11.6% and 13.2% are achieved in tandem and triple‐junction configurations, respectively. The high efficiencies are enabled by deploying effective optical management and by using photoactive materials with complementary absorption.

GenPro4 Optical Model for Solar Cell Simulation and Its Application to Multijunction Solar Cells

“…In addition we include new algorithms for detailed analysis of reflection losses and for current matching in multi-junction solar cells. GENPRO4 has been validated for a wide range of wafer based and thin-film solar cells [24][25][26] and is now commercially available to the solar cell community [27].…”

Density Functional Theory Study of Selenium-Substituted Low-Bandgap Donor–Acceptor–Donor Polymer

“…16,[49][50][51][52] Our simulated results have also a nice correlation with the experimental data as can be seen from Table S4, so, that is why the current level of theory is employed for the rest of simulations.…”

“…To date, the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of PSC has been enhanced up to 13.2%, 15,16 means still large efforts are being required of making it acceptable all over the world. As explained elsewhere, 4 the conduction mechanism of the PSC is also different from that of inorganic semiconductors.…”

Open-Source Automated Mapping Four-Point Probe

“…Despite the growth, PV-generated electricity’s levelized costs need to be further decreased to out-compete the highly subsidized fossil fuel-based technologies and attain tera-watt deployment [30,31,32]. To further reduce levelized costs of solar electricity, more efficient PV devices need to be produced through the use of advanced light management schemes [33,34,35,36,37,38]. Future high-power-conversion-efficiency PV devices must effectively utilize the incident AM1.5 solar spectrum with negligible losses of incident photons into the cell.…”