Metal oxides are generally very stable in aqueous solutions and cheap, but their photochemical activity is usually limited by poor charge carrier separation. Here we show that this problem can be solved by introducing a gradient dopant concentration in the metal oxide film, thereby creating a distributed n þ -n homojunction. This concept is demonstrated with a lowcost, spray-deposited and non-porous tungsten-doped bismuth vanadate photoanode in which carrier-separation efficiencies of up to 80% are achieved. By combining this state-ofthe-art photoanode with an earth-abundant cobalt phosphate water-oxidation catalyst and a double-or single-junction amorphous Si solar cell in a tandem configuration, stable shortcircuit water-splitting photocurrents of B4 and 3 mA cm À 2 , respectively, are achieved under 1 sun illumination. The 4 mA cm À 2 photocurrent corresponds to a solar-to-hydrogen efficiency of 4.9%, which is the highest efficiency yet reported for a stand-alone water-splitting device based on a metal oxide photoanode.

Plasmonic metal nanoparticles are of great interest for light trapping in thin-film silicon solar cells. In this Letter, we demonstrate experimentally that a back reflector with plasmonic Ag nanoparticles can provide light-trapping performance comparable to state-of-the-art random textures in n-i-p amorphous silicon solar cells. This conclusion is based on the comparison to high performance n-i-p solar cell and state-of-the-art efficiency p-i-n solar cells deposited on the Asahi VU-type glass. With the plasmonic back reflector a gain of 2 mA/cm(2) in short-circuit current density was obtained without any deterioration of open circuit voltage or fill factor compared to the solar cell on a flat back reflector. The excellent light trapping is a result of strong light scattering and low parasitic absorption of self-assembled Ag nanoparticles embedded in the back reflector. The plasmonic back reflector provides a high degree of light trapping with a haze in reflection greater than 80% throughout the wavelength range 520-1100 nm. The high performance of plasmonic back reflector is attributed to improvements in the self-assembly technique, which result in a lower surface coverage and fewer small and irregular nanoparticles.

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An approach to study the optical behavior of hydrogenated amorphous silicon solar cells with rough interfaces using computer modeling is presented. In this approach the descriptive haze parameters of a light scattering interface are related to the root mean square roughness of the interface. Using this approach we investigated the effect of front window contact roughness and back contact material on the optical properties of a single junction a-Si:H superstrate solar cell. The simulation results for a-Si:H solar cells with SnO2:F as a front contact and ideal Ag, ZnO/Ag, and Al/Ag as a back contact are shown. For cells with an absorber layer thickness of 150–600 nm the simulations demonstrate that the gain in photogenerated current density due to the use of a textured superstrate is around 2.3 mA cm−2 in comparison to solar cells with flat interfaces. The effect of the front and back contact roughness on the external quantum efficiency (QE) of the solar cell for different parts of the light spectrum was determined. The choice of the back contact strongly influences the QE and the absorption in the nonactive layers for the wavelengths above 650 nm. A practical Ag back contact can be successfully simulated by introducing a thin buffer layer between the n-type a-Si:H and Ag back contact, which has optical properties similar to Al, indicating that the actual reflection at the n-type a-Si:H/Ag interface is smaller than what is expected from the respective bulk optical parameters. In comparison to the practical Ag contact the QE of the cell can be strongly improved by using a ZnO layer at the Ag back contact or an ideal Ag contact. The photogenerated current densities for a solar cell with a 450 nm thick intrinsic a-Si:H layer with ZnO/Ag and ideal Ag are 16.7 and 17.3 mA cm−2, respectively, compared to 14.4 mA cm−2 for the practical Ag back contact. The effect of increasing the roughness of the contact interfaces was investigated for both superstrate and substrate types of solar cells. Increasing the roughness of the carrier electrode, i.e., the rough electrode on which the silicon cell structure is deposited, up to 35 nm leads to a strong increase in the photogenerated current density; for higher values of the interface roughness the photogenerated current density tends to saturate.

Abstract:In a monolithic perovskite/c-Si tandem device, the perovskite top cell has to be deposited onto a flat c-Si bottom cell without anti-reflective front side texture, to avoid fabrication issues. We use optical simulations to analyze the reflection losses that this induces. We then systematically minimize these losses by introducing surface textures in combination with a so-called burial layer to keep the perovskite top cell flat. Optical simulations show that, even with a flat top cell, the monolithic perovskite/c-Si tandem device can reach a matched photocurrent density as high as 19.57 mA/cm Korte, R. Schlatmann, M. K. Nazeeruddin, A. Hagfeldt, M. Gratzel, and B. Rech, "Monolithic perovskite/silicon-heterojunction tandem solar cells processed at low temperature," Energy Environ. Sci. 9(1), 81-88 (2015). 16.