Developing Nanoscale Passivation Layers for Tandem Solar Cell Interfaces: Towards Terawatt-Scale Solar PV

To reduce CO2 emissions, it is critical to shift towards renewable electricity generation. The cheapest way to do so is to replace fossil fuel generation with solar photovoltaics. In 2022, the world reached a milestone of 1 terawatt (TW) - 1 million * 1 million watts - of cumulative installed solar PV. Experts predict that as much as 70 TW of solar PV must be installed by 2050 to rapidly electrify the energy economy. Therefore, a tremendous effort is required by solar scientists and industrial manufacturers to avoid climate disaster. Recently, perovskite / silicon tandem solar cells achieved efficiencies exceeding 30%, however, the design of the silicon cell used to achieve this feat is not compatible with mass production. Therefore, it is critical to redesign the silicon cell to enable the industrial mass manufacture of high efficiency perovskite / silicon tandem cells that will further reduce the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) from solar PV.
The goals of this research project can be concisely described as:
1. The development and optimisation of nanolayer passivation and interconnection layers for the front surface of a silicon PERC to accommodate a tandem structure.
2. The demonstration of a perovskite / silicon tandem solar cell with efficiency >28% using the developed cell design. This will be the highest efficiency large area industrially feasible tandem cell.