Abstract
With the rapidly improving efficiency and stability of perovskite solar cells, the transition of small area device fabrication innovations into modules is becoming increasingly important for the commercialization of this technology. The record efficiencies of small perovskite cells are already approaching that of the best silicon crystal solar cells, but the module efficiencies are still far behind. Understanding the factors that cause the cell-to-module (CTM) efficiency loss is critical for large area perovskite module development. Here, we experimentally validate a comprehensive model that analyzes the CTM efficiency loss with a precision better than 97%. Using the model, we decipher the impact of the critical module components and fabrication variables, including perovskite band gap, transparent electrodes, scribing lines, and film uniformity, on module aperture efficiency. Our analysis provides pathways toward the aperture efficiency ceiling of 25.8% for single-junction perovskite solar modules with a band gap of 1.49 eV. Enlightened by the model, we find that tandem structures have intrinsic merit to achieve high efficiency perovskite modules of 28.4% with a much lower CTM derate due to the smaller photocurrent but larger photovoltage.
- Received 1 March 2022
- Revised 22 March 2022
- Accepted 30 March 2022
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PRXEnergy.1.013004
Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.
Published by the American Physical Society
Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)
Popular Summary
In recent years, researchers have made impressive progress improving the efficiency of photovoltaic devices with lead-halide perovskite active layers. Much of the development so far has focused on the optimization of small individual photovoltaic cells. However, to make lead-halide perovskite solar cells a viable option for commercialization, challenges in upscaling and photovoltaic module design must be addressed. Here, the authors present a model for cell-to-module efficiency loss for a realistic module architecture and verify their predictions experimentally. The achievable module efficiency is impacted by changes in the absorber bandgap, active area and dead area dimensions, perovskite film uniformity, conductivity and transparency of the transparent conductive oxide, and the electrode design. By making adjustments to the module components, the model suggests that the state-of-art record efficiency of 19.3% could be increased to 25.8% for an optimized perovskite device with the same absorber bandgap. Moreover, even greater module performance may be attainable by using perovskite-only tandem structures.
