Reducing Reflective Losses by Texturing Perovskite-Silicon Solar Cell Layers

Abstract

With the discovery of the light absorbing properties of perovskite, a new door has opened to economical and efficient multi-junction solar cells. Towards that end, we sought to improve the quantum efficiency of a perovskite-silicon tandem solar cell by reducing the reflection loss. In previous research we have shown that approximately 12% of losses in a perovskite-silicon solar cell are due to reflection. Many claim that reflection can be reduced by artificially texturing the surface of certain layers within the cell to increase light transmitted through layer boundaries. Ray-tracing is a common method of analysis but does not account for the interaction of reflected and incident waves. We analyze a textured boundary using Maxwell’s equations and finite element analysis. The results indicate that texture boundaries improve the performance of perovskite-silicon solar cells and significantly reduce reflective losses. In fact, after optimization and current matching the overall efficiency of the cell can be increased well above 30%.