On the way to mass production: perovskite silicon tandem cells
The cluster facility operated at HZB allows to produce large-area perovskite/silicon tandem solar cells. This facility, the only one of its kind in the world, helps to develop new industry-related processes, materials and solar cells. © B. Stannowski / HZB
In order to transfer tandem solar cells from laboratory scale to production, HZB is cooperating with the solar module manufacturer Meyer Burger, which has great expertise in heterojunction technology (HJT) for silicon modules. Within the framework of this cooperation, mass production-ready silicon bottom cells based on heterojunction technology are to be combined with a top cell based on perovskite technology.
Meyer Burger is a manufacturer of high-quality solar modules based on silicon heterojunction technology (HJT). Meyer Burger's research and development team has already developed HJT cells in recent years together with Bernd Stannowski's team at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin.
The HZB has great expertise in the field of perovskite solar cells. Recently, laboratory tandem solar cells combining heterojunction and perovskite have achieved record efficiencies of over 31 percent, largely due to the work of Steve Albrecht's group. However, such record-breaking tandem cells have only the laboratory-standard areas of 1 cm² and are partly produced with processes that are not scalable.
"We are therefore delighted to be cooperating with Meyer Burger to transfer this fantastic technology into application," says Bernd Stannowski, who heads the cooperation at HZB. A new cluster facility (KOALA) will also be used. This globally unique facility, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection (BMWK) and the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), makes it possible to produce perovskite/silicon tandem solar cells in a vacuum on industry-standard large wafers.
"Meyer Burger manufactures in Europe and thus creates high-quality jobs. In doing so, the company is exploiting technologies that were developed in Europe," says Rutger Schlatmann, director of the Photovoltaics Competence Centre Berlin (PVcomB) at HZB. The new cooperation agreement is set to run for three years.
- New contact material boosts the efficiency of perovskite solar cellsA newly developed material for the electron contact improves the efficiency of single perovskite solar cells and perovskite/silicon tandem solar cells. The new material is based on a carborane molecule. It offers several advantages over the standard material C60, as shown by the study led by Steve Albrecht’s team. The new material has since been patented and is already commercially available.
- BESSY II: New sample environment allows glimpse into thermocatalytic processesA novel measurement cell allows, for the first time, soft and hard X-ray investigations under high pressures of up to 20 bar and temperatures of up to 400°C. This provides new insights into thermocatalytic processes, such as the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis for producing synthetic fuels. The development of the measurement cell is considered a significant achievement within the Care-O-Sene project.
- Precision interface chemistry pushes perovskite solar cells beyond 26% efficiencyAn international research collaboration has developed a new molecular strategy for controlling one of the most critical interfaces in perovskite solar cells. The resulting solar cells reached a power conversion efficiency of 26.19% in the n i p architecture, together with strong operational stability under prolonged illumination and elevated temperature. The results have been published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.