Perovskite-silicon tandem solar cells are currently one of the most investigated concepts to overcome the theoretical limit for the power conversion efficiency of silicon solar cells. For monolithic tandem solar cells the available light must be distributed equally between the two subcells, which is known as current matching. For a planar device design, a global optimization of the layer thicknesses in the perovskite top cell allows current matching to be reached and reflective losses of the solar cell to be minimized at the same time. However, even after this optimization reflection and parasitic absorption losses occur, which add up to 7 mA/cm 2 .In this contribution we use numerical simulations to study, how well hexagonal sinusoidal nanotextures in the perovskite top-cell can reduce the reflective losses of the combined tandem device. We investigate three configurations. The current density utilization can be increased from 91% for the optimized planar reference to 98% for the best nanotextured device (period 500 nm and peak-to-valley height 500 nm), where 100% refers to the Tiedje-Yablonovitch limit. In a first attempt to experimentally realize such nanophotonically structured perovskite solar cells for monolithic tandems, we investigate the morphology of perovskite layers, which are deposited onto sinusoidally structured substrates.
Recently, liquid phase crystallization of thin silicon films has emerged as a candidate for thin-film photovoltaics. On 10 μm thin absorbers, wafer-equivalent morphologies and open-circuit voltages were reached, leading to 13.2% record efficiency. However, short-circuit current densities are still limited, mainly due to optical losses at the glass-silicon interface. While nano-structures at this interface have been shown to efficiently reduce reflection, up to now these textures caused a deterioration of electronic silicon material quality. Therefore, optical gains were mitigated due to recombination losses. Here, the SMooth Anti-Reflective Three-dimensional (SMART) texture is introduced to overcome this trade-off. By smoothing nanoimprinted SiOx nano-pillar arrays with spin-coated TiOx layers, light in-coupling into laser-crystallized silicon solar cells is significantly improved as successfully demonstrated in three-dimensional simulations and in experiment. At the same time, electronic silicon material quality is equivalent to that of planar references, allowing to reach V oc values above 630 mV. Furthermore, the short-circuit current density could be increased from 21.0 mA cm−2 for planar reference cells to 24.5 mA cm−2 on SMART textures, a relative increase of 18%. External quantum efficiency measurements yield an increase for wavelengths up to 700 nm compared to a state-of-the-art solar cell with 11.9% efficiency, corresponding to a jsc, EQE gain of 2.8 mA cm−2.
and is made available as an electronic preprint with permission of SPIE. One print or electronic copy may be made for personal use only. Systematic or multiple reproduction, distribution to multiple locations via electronic or other means, duplication of any material in this paper for a fee or for commercial purposes, or modification of the content of the paper are prohibited. ABSTRACTRecently, we studied the effect of hexagonal sinusoidal textures on the reflective properties of perovskite-silicon tandem solar cells using the finite element method (FEM). We saw that such nanotextures, applied to the perovskite top cell, can strongly increase the current density utilization from 91% for the optimized planar reference to 98% for the best nanotextured device (period 500 nm and peak-to-valley height 500 nm), where 100% refers to the Tiedje-Yablonovitch limit. * In this manuscript we elaborate on some numerical details of that work: we validate an assumption based on the Tiedje-Yablonovitch limit, we present a convergence study for simulations with the finite-element method, and we compare different configurations for sinusoidal nanotextures.
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