Optical Simulation-Aided Design and Engineering of Monolithic Perovskite/Silicon Tandem Solar Cells

Abstract

Monolithic perovskite/c-Si tandem solar cells have attracted enormous research attention and have achieved efficiencies above 30%. This work describes the development of monolithic tandem solar cells based on silicon heterojunction (SHJ) bottom- and perovskite top-cells and highlights light management techniques assisted by optical simulation. We first engineered (i)a-Si:H passivating layers for (100)-oriented flat c-Si surfaces and combined them with various (n)a-Si:H, (n)nc-Si:H, and (n)nc-SiOx:H interfacial layers for SHJ bottom-cells. In a symmetrical configuration, a long minority carrier lifetime of 16.9 ms was achieved when combining (i)a-Si:H bilayers with (n)nc-Si:H (extracted at the minority carrier density of 1015 cm-3). The perovskite sub-cell uses a photostable mixed-halide composition and surface passivation strategies to minimize energetic losses at charge-transport interfaces. This allows tandem efficiencies above 23% (a maximum of 24.6%) to be achieved using all three types of (n)-layers. Observations from experimentally prepared devices and optical simulations indicate that both (n)nc-SiOx:H and (n)nc-Si:H are promising for use in high-efficiency tandem solar cells. This is possible due to minimized reflection at the interfaces between the perovskite and SHJ sub-cells by optimized interference effects, demonstrating the applicability of such light management techniques to various tandem structures.