High-performance ultrathin perovskite solar cells utilizing metamaterial-based frequency selective surfaces and absorbers

Abstract

Ultrathin solar cells reduce material usage to reduce toxicity, efficient photonic light-trapping is required to harvest the incident light efficiently for an insufficient absorber thickness. Simultaneously, the instability induced by rising temperatures presents an urgent challenge. This work presents a metamaterial structure in which the hyperbolic metasurface component reflect infrared light while permitting visible light to pass through, thereby lowering the internal temperature of the solar cell by 20K and enhancing its lifespan. Moreover, the metamaterials absorbers enable the absorptivitty of visible light in an ultrathin solar cell (40 nm) to increase from approximately 10 % to over 95 %, thus achieving an open-circuit current density of up to 24.79 mA/cm2, comparable to that of thick devices. The results suggest that the designed metamaterials structures are highly efficient in absorbing visible light and reflecting infrared light to enhance the performance of solar cells and have great potential for application in ultrathin solar cells.