An industrially viable competitor to silicon-based solar cells is in the works

摘要

A team of researchers from Kanazawa University developed a perovskite solar cell that optimized light in-coupling, light trapping, and other essential properties for maximum energy conversion efficiency. The researchers used a combination of lab work and computational studies to evaluate their solar cell design performance fairly. Upon finding an optimum thickness for the front contact layer, the researchers measured an energy conversion efficiency of 16.6%, assuming typical sunlight conditions. Although this is not quite as good as commercial silicon-based solar cells, electromagnetic simulations were a powerful tool for predicting the possible energy conversion efficiency limit by optimizing specific parameters.