Recently, a research team led by Prof. Charles Chee Surya (Clarea Au Endowed Professor in Energy) at PolyU’s Department of Electronic and Information Engineering has developed perovskite-silicon tandem solar cells with power conversion efficiency of 25.5%, setting the highest record of its kind in the world. The perovskite solar cells functioning as the top layer can harvest the short wavelength photons while the bottom layer coated with silicon can absorb long wavelength photons.
This breakthrough adopted three innovative approaches, including conducting a low-temperature annealing chemical process in dry oxygen to reduce perovskite defects; fabricating a highly-transparent tri-layer composed of molybdenum trioxide and gold to increase light transmission and photovoltaic properties; and incorporating a light trapping film that mimicked the surface morphology of rose petals. With these approaches, the energy conversion efficiency can thus be greatly enhanced. Details>>