Routes for Light Management in Monolithic Perovskite/Silicon Tandem Solar Cells

TL;DR

This paper investigates light management in monolithic perovskite/silicon tandem solar cells, revealing that surface texturing is not essential for optimal optical performance and proposing a new planar architecture that reduces electrical losses.

Contribution

The study clarifies the optical roles of textures and introduces a novel architecture that eliminates the need for perovskite surface texturing, enhancing efficiency and simplifying fabrication.

Findings

Planar perovskite layers can achieve optical performance comparable to textured ones.

The new architecture reduces voltage losses by up to six times compared to fully-textured devices.

Optical simulations support the potential for higher efficiency with simplified design.

Abstract

Fully-textured perovskite/silicon tandem solar cells have emerged as promising candidates for next-generation photovoltaics. The optical functions of full texturing, however, are not yet fully understood. A key challenge is the requirement for perovskite layer texturing, which often leads to increased electrical losses. Here, we elucidate the distinct optical roles of front and rear textures in tandem configurations using optical simulations and use these insights to propose a new architecture that eliminates the need for perovskite surface texturing. We demonstrate that our proposed structure achieves optical results comparable to those of fully-textured devices, while its planar perovskite layer has the potential to reduce electrical losses. The high optical performance also results in higher efficiency if a texture-induced voltage loss as low as 50 mV is assumed, which is about six times lower than the loss of fully-textured devices, thus enabling higher efficiencies within a simplified design. Our results show that perovskite texturing is not essential for optimal light management, thus opening the way to combine efficient light management with high electrical performance.