Investigation of High-Efficiency and Stable Carbon-Perovskite/Silicon and Carbon-Perovskite/CIGS-GeTe Tandem Solar Cells
Ahmed Saeed, Mostafa M. Salah, Abdelhalim Zekry, Mohamed Mousa, Ahmed Shaker, Mohamed Abouelatta, Fathy Z. Amer, Roaa I. Mubarak, Dalia Louis
Abstract
The primary purpose of recent research on solar cells is to achieve a higher power conversion efficiency with stable characteristics. To push the developments of photovoltaic (PV) technology, tandem solar cells are being intensively researched, as they have higher power conversion efficiency (PCE) than single-junction cells. Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) are recently used as a top cell of tandem solar cells thanks to their tunable energy gap, high short circuit current, and low cost of fabrication. One of the main challenges in PSCs cells is the stability issue. Carbon perovskite solar cells (CPSCs) without a hole transport material (HTM) presented a promising solution for PSCs’ stability. The two-terminal monolithic tandem solar cells demonstrate the commercial tandem cells market. Consequently, all the proposed tandem solar cells in this paper are equivalent to two-terminal monolithic tandem devices. In this work, two two-terminal tandem solar cells are proposed and investigated using the SCAPS-1D device simulator. Carbon perovskite solar cell (CPSC) without hole transport material (HTM) is used as the top cell with a new proposed gradient doping in the perovskite layer. This proposal has led to a substantial enhancement of the stability issue known to be present in carbon perovskite cells. Moreover, a higher PCE, exceeding 22%, has been attained for the proposed CPSC. Two bottom cells are examined, Si and CIGS-GeTe solar cells. The suggested CPSC/Si and CPSC/CIGS-GeTe tandem solar cells have the advantage of having just two junctions, which reduces the complexity and cost of solar cells. The performance parameters are found to be improved. In specific, the PCEs of the two proposed cells are 19.89% and 24.69%, respectively.