Polymer Tandem solar cell: An overview

Solar cell has gained Wide Attention in the last decade or so due to the fact that solar cell has the potential to tap the worlds current energy demand of 15TW besides this solar cell is renewable and cleaner source of energy unlike fossil fuel . The primary problem currently with the solar cell is that it has relatively low efficiency and expensive installation and very long energy payback time. Lot of research and development is going on to make solar cells affordable recently polymer solar cell gained wide attention worldwide as it belongs to the category of direct band gap semiconductors which helps in decreasing the thinness of photo-voltaic up to a level of few micrometer also the polymer solar cell has an inherit advantage of flexibility, very low thickness but has incorporated with an disadvantage of low efficiency which is around 11% but tandem solar cell which is comprised of two layers of different active material which enables the cell to cover broad spectrum and overall increase in efficiency. Tandem solar cell has a huge potential due to utilization of energy extracted from two active layers in a single solar cell that’s the reason there is noticeable addition in the performance, efficiency and other parameters of the solar cell. This article tends to provide an overview how tandem solar cell works, the polymer material that is being used in tandem solar cell which is divided into two categories high energy band gap polymers and low energy band gap polymers then discussing different types and use of interconnecting layer in polymer tandem solar cell.