Two-terminal tandem solar cells based on perovskite and transition metal dichalcogenides

Abstract

Perovskite solar cells have shown power conversion efficiencies (PCE) comparable to crystalline silicon solar cell despite involving low-temperature, solution based synthesis processes outside clean room environment. As the theoretical PCE of a solar cell with band gap 1.34 eV is capped to 33 % due to Shockley–Queisser limit, tandem configurations are being investigated to go beyond this limit. Here, we propose a two-terminal (2T) tandem solar cell structure consisting of perovskite and multilayer transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) as the absorber layers of the top and the bottom subcells, respectively and investigate their performance parameters using Solar Cell Capacitance Simulator- 1 Dimension (SCAPS-1D) software package. We demonstrate that the 2T tandem solar cell consisting of CH${}_3$NH${}_3$PbI${}_3$ with band gap 1.55 eV and MoTe${}_2$ with bandgap 1.1 eV shows optimum PCE of 35.3 % under AM 1.5 G illumination. This work gives a comprehensive understanding of modelling perovskite/TMDC based tandem solar cells. It also gives an experimental window for realization of such tandem solar cells for further investigation.