The perovskite material system allows for the realization of perovskite/silicon tandem solar cells with high energy conversion efficiencies at low cost.

Light trapping and photon management in honeycomb-textured microcrystalline silicon solar cells are investigated experimentally and by modeling of the manufacturing process and the optical wave propagation. The solar cells on honeycombtextured substrates exhibit short circuit current densities exceeding 30 mA/cm 2 and energy conversion efficiencies of up to 11.0%. By controlling the fabrication process, the period and height of the honeycomb-textured substrates are varied. The influence of the honeycomb substrate morphology on the interfaces of the individual solar cell layers and the quantum efficiency is determined. The optical wave propagation is calculated using 3D finite difference time domain simulations. A very good agreement between the optical simulation and experimental results is obtained. Strategies are discussed on how to increase the short circuit current density beyond 30 mA/cm 2 . In particular, the influence of plasmonic losses of the textured silver (Ag) reflector on the short circuit current and quantum efficiency of the solar cell is discussed. Finally, solar cell structures with reduced plasmonic losses are proposed.

Plasmonic effects in amorphous silicon thin film solar cells with randomly textured metal back contact were investigated experimentally and numerically. The influence of different metal back contacts with and without ZnO interlayer was studied and losses in the individual layers of the solar cell were quantified. The amorphous silicon thin film solar cells were prepared on randomly textured substrates using large area production equipment and exhibit conversion efficiencies approaching 10%. The optical wave propagation within the solar cells was studied by Finite Difference Time Domain simulations. The quantum efficiency of solar cells with and without ZnO interlayer was simulated and the interplay between the reflection, quantum efficiency and absorption in the back contact will be discussed.

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Photogenerated polaron-pair ultrafast dynamics in poly(3-hexylthiophene)-based devices are found to be influenced by external electric fields via delayed field-induced singlet exciton dissociation, yielding a bimolecular decay contribution.