A review of recent progress in heterogeneous silicon tandem solar cells

Abstract

Silicon solar cells are the most established solar cell technology and are expected to dominate the market in the near future. As state-of-the-art silicon solar cells are approaching the Shockley–Queisser limit, stacking silicon solar cells with other photovoltaic materials to form multi-junction devices is an obvious pathway to further raise the efficiency. However, many challenges stand in the way of fully realizing the potential of silicon tandem solar cells because heterogeneously integrating silicon with other materials often degrades their qualities. Recently, above or near 30% silicon tandem solar cell has been demonstrated, showing the promise of achieving high-efficiency and low-cost solar cells via silicon tandem. This paper reviews the recent progress of integrating solar cell with other mainstream solar cell materials. The first part of this review focuses on the integration of silicon with III–V semiconductor solar cells, which is a long-researched topic since the emergence of III–V semiconductors. We will describe the main approaches—heteroepitaxy, wafer bonding and mechanical stacking—as well as other novel approaches. The second part introduces the integration of silicon with polycrystalline thin-film solar cells, mainly perovskites on silicon solar cells because of its rapid progress recently. We will also use an analytical model to compare the material qualities of different types of silicon tandem solar cells and project their practical efficiency limits.

Earth abundant colloidal carbon quantum dots for luminescent solar concentrators

“…[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17] Compared to traditional fossil fuels, the use of solar energy can reduce carbon emissions which lead to environmental pollution and climate change. [1][2][3][4][5] Silicon solar cells have been widely used for solar-to-electricity conversion with high power conversion efficiency (PCE) and long-term stability. 4,5 However, the cost of electricity generated by silicon solar cells is still much higher than that generated by fossil fuels, or hydro/wind-electricity.…”

“…[1][2][3][4][5] Silicon solar cells have been widely used for solar-to-electricity conversion with high power conversion efficiency (PCE) and long-term stability. 4,5 However, the cost of electricity generated by silicon solar cells is still much higher than that generated by fossil fuels, or hydro/wind-electricity. Researchers have fabricated the third-generation excitonic solar cells [e.g.…”

The Outdoor Field Test of the 4T III-V on Si Tandem PV Module and Its Energy Yield Modeling

“…On-Si tandem solar cells use the widely-used Si solar cell as the bottom junction of the tandem solar cell. Because the technology of Si solar cells is well-established, the production cost of the solar cell is expected to reduce, at least, the one to the substrate or the bottom junction [21]. The III-V/Si (III-V on Si) 3-junction and 2-junction tandem solar cells right now exhibit excellent efficiency with 35.9% [22] and 32.8% [22].…”

Super-Multi-Junction Solar Cell, Device Configuration with the Potential of More Than 50 % of the Annual Energy Conversion Efficiency (Non-Concentration)

“…For example, Yamaguchi et al predicted more than 45% efficiency in fields concentrator solar cells intensively studied for the application of CPV (Concentrator photovoltaic) [2], but the highest efficiency everachieved is 44.2% in 2013 by Sharp Corporation [5][6]. Most recently, a series of researches that was based on the practical limit of the material improvement to various materials like Si, III-V, II-VI thin films, organic, and Perovskite, as well as various configurations like quantum dots, hetero-junction, and multi-junction, has been published [7][8][9][10][11]. Obviously, these kinds of efficiency-limit studies tend radiation coupling would be adequate to suppress the spectrum mismatching loss [57][58][59][60].…”