Abstract
Abstract Metal halide perovskites have emerged in recent years as promising photovoltaic materials due to their excellent optical and electrical properties, enabling perovskite solar cells (PSCs) with certified power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) greater than 25%. Provided radiative recombination is the dominant recombination mechanism, photon recycling – the process of reabsorption (and re-emission) of photons that result from radiative recombination – can be utilized to further enhance the PCE toward the Shockley–Queisser (S-Q) theoretical limit. Geometrical optics can be exploited for the intentional trapping of such re-emitted photons within the device, to enhance the PCE. However, this scheme reaches its fundamental diffraction limits at the submicron scale. Therefore, introducing photonic nanostructures offer attractive solutions to manipulate and trap light at the nanoscale via light coupling into guided modes, as well as localized surface plasmon and surface plasmon polariton modes. This review focuses on light-trapping schemes for efficient photon recycling in PSCs. First, we summarize the working principles of photon recycling, which is followed by a review of essential requirements to make this process efficient. We then survey photon recycling in state-of-the-art PSCs and propose design strategies to invoke light-trapping to effectively exploit photon recycling in PSCs. Finally, we formulate a future outlook and discuss new research directions in the context of photon recycling.
Highlights
Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have become a leading technology in the photovoltaic (PV) research community owing to the remarkable optical and electrical properties of metal halide perovskites such as a large absorption coefficient, sharp absorption edge, long carrier diffusion lengths, as well as tunable bandgap [1,2,3]
Metal halide perovskites have emerged in recent years as promising photovoltaic materials due to their excellent optical and electrical properties, enabling perovskite solar cells (PSCs) with certified power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) greater than 25%
We can see that above S = 102 cm s−1, the VOC and PCE considerably decrease, even with high values for τbulk, illustrating that both bulk and surface passivation of metal halide perovskite defects play a crucial role for enhancing photon recycling and considerably impacts the efficiency potential of PSCs
Summary
Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have become a leading technology in the photovoltaic (PV) research community owing to the remarkable optical and electrical properties of metal halide perovskites such as a large absorption coefficient, sharp absorption edge, long carrier diffusion lengths, as well as tunable bandgap [1,2,3]. By texturing the c-Si front surface (often its rear), using a (random) micron-sized pyramid structure [19, 20] with a typical feature size of few microns, combined with dielectric surface coatings, one can decrease the reflectivity and randomize the light propagation directions inside the c-Si solar cell This increases the optical path length inside the active material and substantially enhances the absorption of photons with energies close to the c-Si bandgap. Thin-film solar cells, can benefit from photonic structures on the wavelength scale, such as diffraction gratings [22], plasmonic structures [23], and nanoscale structured surfaces [24] for light-trapping Light propagation within such nanoscale devices is explained by wave optics rather than ray optics. We conclude by providing an outlook and suggesting future research directions
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