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Advances in Tandem Architectures toward High-Efficiency Solar Cells
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Advances in Tandem Architectures toward High-Efficiency Solar Cells

A special issue of Energies (ISSN 1996-1073). This special issue belongs to the section "A2: Solar Energy and Photovoltaic Systems".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (21 July 2023) | Viewed by 10011

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Xiaojie Xu

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA 94550, USA
Interests: transparent conductors; nanostructured optoelectronic materials for optoelectronic devices, including photodetectors, solar cells, etc.
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Sudhanshu Shukla

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre (IMEC), 3001 Leuven, Flemish Region, Belgium
Interests: thin film; perovskite and DSSC solar cells; photoelectrochemical cells; photophysics of energy materials; photoelectrochemical solar to fuel conversion
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Tapping the vast energy available from the sun in the form of electricity and chemical fuels has the tremendous potential to address the global energy supply and climate change. Over the years, power conversion efficiencies have improved drastically due to both material innovation and advanced processing techniques. Of those, tandem architectures have emerged which are extremely promising when it comes to pushing the frontiers beyond single junction efficiency limits due to their efficient utilization of the solar energy spectrum and innovation in device design.

Recently, with the emergence of perovskite materials and developments in thin films (CIGS,CZTS, Sb2Se3), solar cells have drastically changed the landscape with more options available to stack different material combinations in 4-T and 2-T configurations. Additionally, 3-T design is also attracting attention due to its unique operational functionality, which relaxes the current matching criterion. Along with that, contact layers are becoming increasingly important for monolithic cell design. Such solar cell designs represent potentially disruptive technologies for electricity generation and drive photoelectrochemical reactions for chemical fuel production.

Therefore, this Special Issue calls for high-quality research progress on tandem solar cell materials, design, contact layers, and their utilization.

Subjects covered in this Special Issue include but are not limited to:

  • Wide bandgap (Eg > 1.5 eV) solar cell materials for tandem;
  • Band gap tunable materials for tandem;
  • Theoretical insights on efficiency potential of 4-T, 2-T, and 3-T tandem solar cells;
  • Tandem solar architectures to drive photoelectrochemical HER and CO2R reaction;
  • Low band gap (Eg < 1.5 eV) materials for tandem;
  • Multijunction approaches for high Voc and IR spectrum utilization;
  • Development of transparent conductors (front and back contact);
  • Microstructure design for light capturing;
  • Technoeconomic analysis of the tandem solar cells.

Dr. Xiaojie Xu
Dr. Sudhanshu Shukla
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Energies is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  •  Tandem solar cell
  •  Multijunction solar cell
  •  Wide bandgap photovoltaic material
  •  Low bandgap photovoltaic material
  •  Utilization of solar spectrum
  •  Perovskite solar cell
  •  Silicon solar cell
  •  Thin film solar cell
  •  Quantum dot solar cell
  •  Transparent conductor
  •  Front contact
  •  Back contact
  •  Light capture
  •  Modeling and simulation of tandem solar cell
  •  Technoeconomic analysis
  •  Open circuit voltage (Voc)
  •  External quantum efficiency (EQE)
  •  Fill Factor (FF)
  •  Power conversion efficiency
  •  Cost per watt

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

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16 pages, 10701 KiB  
Article
A Comparison and Introduction of Novel Solar Panel’s Fault Diagnosis Technique Using Deep-Features Shallow-Classifier through Infrared Thermography
by Waqas Ahmed, Muhammad Umair Ali, M. A. Parvez Mahmud, Kamran Ali Khan Niazi, Amad Zafar and Tamas Kerekes
Energies 2023, 16(3), 1043; https://doi.org/10.3390/en16031043 - 17 Jan 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1124
Abstract
Solar photovoltaics (PV) are susceptible to environmental and operational stresses due to their operation in an open atmosphere. Early detection and treatment of stress prevents hotspots and the total failure of solar panels. In response, the literature has proposed several approaches, each with [...] Read more.
Solar photovoltaics (PV) are susceptible to environmental and operational stresses due to their operation in an open atmosphere. Early detection and treatment of stress prevents hotspots and the total failure of solar panels. In response, the literature has proposed several approaches, each with its own limitations, such as high processing system requirements, large amounts of memory, long execution times, fewer types of faults diagnosed, failure to extract relevant features, and so on. Therefore, this research proposes a fast framework with the least memory and computing system requirements for the six different faults of a solar panel. Infrared thermographs from solar panels are fed into intense and architecturally complex deep convolutional networks capable of differentiating one million images into 1000 classes. Features without backpropagation are calculated to reduce execution time. Afterward, deep features are fed to shallow classifiers due to their fast training time. The proposed approach trains the shallow classifier in approximately 13 s with 95.5% testing accuracy. The approach is validated by manually extracting thermograph features and through the transfer of learned deep neural network approaches in terms of accuracy and speed. The proposed method is also compared with other existing methods. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Tandem Architectures toward High-Efficiency Solar Cells)
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11 pages, 2798 KiB  
Article
Three Terminal Perovskite/Silicon Solar Cell with Bipolar Transistor Architecture
by Gemma Giliberti, Francesco Di Giacomo and Federica Cappelluti
Energies 2022, 15(21), 8146; https://doi.org/10.3390/en15218146 - 01 Nov 2022
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2021
Abstract
Solar photovoltaic energy is the most prominent candidate to speed up the transition from the existing non-renewable energy system to a more efficient and environmentally friendly one. Currently, silicon cells dominate the photovoltaic market owing to their cost-effectiveness and high efficiency, nowadays approaching [...] Read more.
Solar photovoltaic energy is the most prominent candidate to speed up the transition from the existing non-renewable energy system to a more efficient and environmentally friendly one. Currently, silicon cells dominate the photovoltaic market owing to their cost-effectiveness and high efficiency, nowadays approaching the theoretical limit. Higher efficiency can be achieved by tandem devices, where a wide bandgap semiconductor is stacked on top of the silicon cell. Thin-film perovskite technology has emerged as one of the most promising for the development of silicon-based tandems because of the optimal perovskite opto-electronic properties and the fast progress achieved in the last decade. While most of the reported perovskite/silicon tandem devices exploit a two-terminal series connected structure, three-terminal solutions have recently drawn significant attention due to their potential for higher energy yield. In this work, we report for the first time a theoretical study, based on validated optical and electrical simulations, of three-terminal perovskite/silicon solar cells employing a hetero-junction bipolar transistor structure. With respect to other three-terminal tandems proposed so far, the transistor structure can be implemented with rear-contact silicon cells, which are simpler and more common than interdigitated back-contact ones. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Tandem Architectures toward High-Efficiency Solar Cells)
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23 pages, 6970 KiB  
Article
A Theoretical Evaluation of the Efficiencies of Metal-Free 1,3,4-Oxadiazole Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells: Insights from Electron–Hole Separation Distance Analysis
by Louis-Charl Cloete Coetzee, Adedapo Sunday Adeyinka and Nomampondo Magwa
Energies 2022, 15(13), 4913; https://doi.org/10.3390/en15134913 - 05 Jul 2022
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 1500
Abstract
Herein, some novel metal-free 1,3,4-oxadiazole compounds O1–O7 were evaluated for their photovoltaic properties using density functional theory (DFT) and time-dependent density functional theory (TD-DFT) calculations to determine if they can serve as metal-free organic dyes in the use of dye-sensitized solar [...] Read more.
Herein, some novel metal-free 1,3,4-oxadiazole compounds O1–O7 were evaluated for their photovoltaic properties using density functional theory (DFT) and time-dependent density functional theory (TD-DFT) calculations to determine if they can serve as metal-free organic dyes in the use of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). To understand the trends in the relative efficiencies of the investigated compounds as dyes in DSSCs, their electron contributions, hole contributions, and electron–hole overlaps for each respective atom and fragment within the molecule were analyzed with a particular focus on the electron densities on the anchoring segments. As transition density matrices (TDM) provide details about the departure of each electron from its corresponding hole during excitations, which results in charge transfer (CT), the charge separation distance (Δr) between the electron and its corresponding hole was studied, in addition to the degree of electron–hole overlap (Λ). The latter, single-point excitation energy of each electron, the percentage electron contribution to the anchoring segments of each compound, the incident-photon-conversion-efficiency (IPCE), charge recombination, light harvesting efficiency (LHE), electron injection (Φinj), and charge collection efficiency (ncollect) were then compared to Δr to determine whether the expected relationships hold. Moreover, parameters such as diffusion constant (Dπ) and electron lifetime (t), amongst others, were also used to describe electron excitation processes. Since IPCE is the key parameter in determining the efficiency, O3 was found to be the best dye due to its highest value. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Tandem Architectures toward High-Efficiency Solar Cells)
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9 pages, 3002 KiB  
Article
Scale Effect on Producing Gaseous and Liquid Chemical Fuels via CO2 Reduction
by Ya Liu, Dan Lei, Xiaoqi Guo, Tengfei Ma, Feng Wang and Yubin Chen
Energies 2022, 15(1), 335; https://doi.org/10.3390/en15010335 - 04 Jan 2022
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 1614
Abstract
Producing chemical fuels from sunlight is a sustainable way to utilize solar energy and reduce carbon emissions. Within the current photovoltaic-electrolysis or photoelectrochemical-based solar fuel generation system, electrochemical CO2 reduction is the key step. Although there has been important progress in developing [...] Read more.
Producing chemical fuels from sunlight is a sustainable way to utilize solar energy and reduce carbon emissions. Within the current photovoltaic-electrolysis or photoelectrochemical-based solar fuel generation system, electrochemical CO2 reduction is the key step. Although there has been important progress in developing new materials and devices, scaling up electrochemical CO2 reduction is essential to promote the industrial application of this technology. In this work, we use Ag and In as the representative electrocatalyst for producing gas and liquid products in both small and big electrochemical cells. We find that gas production is blocked more easily than liquid products when scaling up the electrochemical cell. Simulation results show that the generated gas product, CO, forms bubbles on the surface of the electrocatalyst, thus blocking the transport of CO2, while there is no such trouble for producing the liquid product such as formate. This work provides methods for studying the mass transfer of CO, and it is also an important reference for scaling up solar fuel generation devices that are constructed based on electrochemical CO2 reduction. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Tandem Architectures toward High-Efficiency Solar Cells)
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Review

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25 pages, 2425 KiB  
Review
Recent Progress in Transparent Conductive Materials for Photovoltaics
by Sandeep Kumar Maurya, Hazel Rose Galvan, Gaurav Gautam and Xiaojie Xu
Energies 2022, 15(22), 8698; https://doi.org/10.3390/en15228698 - 19 Nov 2022
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2959
Abstract
Transparent conducting materials (TCMs) are essential components for a variety of optoelectronic devices, such as photovoltaics, displays and touch screens. In recent years, extensive efforts have been made to develop TCMs with both high electrical conductivity and optical transmittance. Based on material types, [...] Read more.
Transparent conducting materials (TCMs) are essential components for a variety of optoelectronic devices, such as photovoltaics, displays and touch screens. In recent years, extensive efforts have been made to develop TCMs with both high electrical conductivity and optical transmittance. Based on material types, they can be mainly categorized into the following classes: metal oxides, metal nanowire networks, carbon-material-based TCMs (graphene and carbon nanotube networks) and conjugated conductive polymers (PEDOT:PSS). This review will discuss the fundamental electrical and optical properties, typical fabrication methods and the applications in solar cells for each class of TCMs and highlight the current challenges and potential future research directions. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Tandem Architectures toward High-Efficiency Solar Cells)
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