The Role of Photonics: World-Record Perovskite/ Silicon Tandem Solar Cells

Hosted By: Optics for Energy Technical Group

05 July 2022 9:00 - 10:00

Eastern Time (US & Canada) (UTC -05:00)

Switching humankind's energy supply to carbon-free technologies is one of the most pressing challenges. Photovoltaic solar energy is amongst the most promising technologies to provide cheap and sustainable electricity. Most solar cells are crystalline silicon solar cells, a mature technology with little room for further improvement. Tandem solar cells, where solar cells with different bandgaps are stacked on top of each other, use the solar spectrum more effectively and therefore allow for higher power conversion efficiencies. In recent years, solar cells based on metal halide perovskites moved into the focus of research, because of their excellent optoelectronic properties. They proved to be an ideal partner for silicon solar cells in perovskite/silicon tandem solar cells (PSTSC). Recently, Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin reached 29.8% efficiency with this approach, which is the current world record as of May 2022. In this webinar, Klaus Jäger will first motivate the importance of solar energy. Then, he will discuss the effects that limit the efficiency of silicon solar cells and introduce the concept of multi-junction solar cells. Next, he will review several innovations that helped push perovskite/silicon solar cells to the current state of the art. In the webinar, he will focus on the role of photonics in this development. He will look at different experimental approaches to nanotexture PSTSC and discuss how optical simulations helped improve PSTSC.