Organometallic halide perovskite/barium di-silicide thin-film double-junction solar cells

Barium di-silicide (BaSi2) is an abundant and inexpensive semiconductor with appealing opto-electrical properties. In this work we show that a 2-μm thick BaSi2-based thin-film solar cell can exhibit an implied photo-current density equal to 41.1 mA/cm2, which is higher than that of a state-of-the-art wafer-based c-Si hetero-junction solar cell. This performance makes BaSi2 an attractive absorber for high-performing thin-film and multi-junction solar cells. In particular, to assess the potential of barium di-silicide, we propose a thin-film double-junction solar cell based on organometallic halide perovskite (CH3NH3PbI3) as top absorber and BaSi2 as bottom absorber. The resulting modelled ultra-thin double-junction CH3NH3PbI3 / BaSi2 (< 2 μm) exhibits an implied total photo-current density equal to 38.65 mA/cm2 (19.84 mA/cm2 top cell, 18.81 mA/cm2 bottom cell) and conversion efficiencies up to 28%.