Tandem solar cells made from perovskite and organic material break efficiency record

Attempting to enhance the effectivity of photo voltaic cells to grow to be unbiased from fossil vitality sources is a significant objective of photo voltaic cell analysis. A crew led by physicist Dr. Felix Lang from the College of Potsdam, Prof. Lei Meng and Prof. Yongfang Li from the Chinese language Academy of Sciences, Beijing, has now mixed perovskite with natural absorbers to type a record-level tandem photo voltaic cell as reported in Nature.

Combining two supplies that selectively take up brief and lengthy wavelengths, e.g., blue/inexperienced and pink/infrared elements of the spectrum, makes the perfect use of our daylight and is a widely known technique to extend effectivity in photo voltaic cells.

The very best pink/infrared absorbing elements of photo voltaic cells to this point have been, nevertheless, made out of conventional supplies, reminiscent of silicon or CIGS (copper indium gallium selenide). Sadly, these require excessive processing temperatures, and thus exhibit a comparatively excessive carbon footprint.

Of their work, Lang and colleagues mix two rising photo voltaic cell applied sciences, particularly perovskite and organic solar cellswhich might be each processed at low temperatures with a low carbon footprint. Attaining a file degree of 25.7% effectivity for this new mixture, nevertheless, was not straightforward, says Felix Lang. “This was only possible by combining two major breakthroughs.”

First, Meng and Li synthesized a novel pink/infrared absorbing natural photo voltaic cell that extends its absorption even additional into the infrared.

“Still, tandem solar cells were limited by the perovskite layer, which shows strong efficiency losses if adjusted to absorb only blue/green parts of the sun spectrum,” he explains. “To tackle this, we utilized a novel passivation layer applied to the perovskite that reduces material defects and improves the performance of the whole cell.”