Perovskite/nanocrystalline-silicon tandem solar cells – PERSIL

A major boost in photovoltaic power conversion efficiency can be achieved from combining different solar cells with complementary absorption ranges. However the challenge is to make such tandem solar cells with high efficiency at low production cost, with the major barrier being a low-cost, good quality, large bandgap material. The past three years have seen the rapid emergence of a new class of solar cells based on hybrid perovskite materials with efficiency up to 20%. Perovskites are ideal candidates to make tandem solar cells with silicon bottom cells since they use low deposition cost and the band gap can be tuned advantageously. However, the pairing with high quality monocrystalline silicon is not evident, as the relative increase in efficiency (above the 25.6% available in the lab) may not offset the increase cost. The PERSIL project aims to investigate and develop the potential of these new perovskite-based solar cells as well as their application in tandem devices in combination with low-cost nanocrystalline-silicon bottom cells. The main objectives of PERSIL are 1) fabrication and characterization of perovskite cells, 2) fabrication and characterization of silicon/perovskite tandem cells with efficiency up to 25%, 3) investigation of the tandem cell stability and scalability.