Analysis of nanostructured anti reflection coating for various perovskite layer thicknesses in perovskite silicon tandem solar cells

Abstract

Abstract The anti-reflection coating (ARC) plays an important role in the design of every kind of solar cell. The suitable optimization of the ARC layer can make a lot of difference in the final output of the cell, by reducing the reflections at the surface. In this regard, the present paper highlights and analyses numerically the effect of nanostructured ARC for different top perovskite layer thicknesses in perovskite-silicon tandem solar cells. In the present case, the nanostructures for ARC are considered to be made up of SiO2 nanoparticles (NP) embedded in ITO. To evaluate the effect of nanostructure for this proposed cell, the nanostructured tandem cell is compared with its planar ARC-based reference cell. The top perovskite active thickness is varied from 100 nm to 800 nm. It has been found that the effect of nanostructured ARC is more pronounced for thinner perovskite layer-based cells than for thicker layers. To reduce reflections at the front surface, the SiO2 NP diameter and inter-particle spacing are optimized. With the nanostructured ARC at the top, the cell achieved the current density rise of 11.3% as compared to the reference cell for a 100 nm thick perovskite-based tandem cell design. As both the sub-cells are in series in tandem design, the top cell current is matched to the bottom silicon layer current by optimizing the bottom cell too. The proposed ARC design has the added advantage that it can simply be done with sol–gel processes.