Breakthrough in flexible solar technology: Uniform submicron pyramids boost efficiency of perovskite/silicon tandem cells to 30.04%

image:

(a) Schematic diagram illustrating the principle of the three-point bending test;

(b) experimental setup for the three-point bending test;

(c) load-displacement responses of silicon wafers with different thicknesses;

(d) SEM image of silicon surface with large-sized pyramids；

(e)SEM image of silicon surface with small-sized pyramids;

(f) load-displacement responses of silicon wafers with different pyramid sizes.

Credit: Qi Liu, Junjun Li, Fei Wang, Shuangbiao Xia, Yuhui Ji, Yutao Wang, Yunren Luo, Jian Yu, Fanying Meng, Liping Zhang, Zhengxin Liu & Wenzhu Liu.

Crystalline silicon solar cells currently dominate the global photovoltaic market, and combining them with wide-bandgap perovskite solar cells has successfully pushed power conversion efficiency limits even further. However, creating lightweight and flexible versions of these tandem cells has been severely hindered by mechanical interfacial stress between the silicon bottom cell and the perovskite top cell, which often leads to delamination and device degradation.

Now, a team of researchers from the Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology (SIMIT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, alongside collaborators from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences and Southwest Petroleum University, has developed an innovative solution to this structural challenge.

In a study published in ENGINEERING Energy, the researchers demonstrated that reducing both the thickness of the silicon wafer and the size of the surface…

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