CC BY
6Dielectric nanostructures for efficiency improvement of
perovskite solar cells
A. Furasova1*, S. Makarov1'2
1- The School of Physics and Engineering, ITMO University, Saint-Petersburg, Russia 2- Qingdao Innovation and Development Center, Harbin Engineering University, Qingdao 266000,
Shandong, China
Dielectric nanostructures are widely used to protect perovskite solar cells (PSCs) from ion migration between functional layers, improve charge transport properties through band alignment engineering or are aimed to increase a light harvesting inside thin-film devices [1-3]. Today many researchers have made many attempts to combine these approaches to increase J-V parameters for PSCs and make their novel developments more universal for various photoactive semiconductors of solar cells. Moreover, different methodologies are proposed to create nanofabrication, nanotexturing and nanostructuring in a large scale via laser-assisted techniques [4].
Dielectric Mie-resonant nanoparticles (NPs) is a powerful technology for light control at the nano-and microscale, which have been experimentally employed for a plenty of applications as high-speed and low-power consumption electro-optic modulators [5], modern nanolenses, where the size and shape of dielectric nanoarray plays a crucial role in the device performance. Moreover, we have recently shown that Silicon NPs are successfully used for the improvement of PSCs via light harvesting effect in a perovskite [6]. To synthesize these resonant NPs a femtosecond laser ablation is considered as a perfect method to prepare well-crystalline spherical samples with low impurities in a large-scale production with size distribution of 70-270 nm [6]. These particles can resonantly scatter the incident light in a broad-spectrum range. However, for PSCs with 1.4-1.8 eV of a band gap this wide size distribution is not useful and it is better to harvest the light where the own perovskite light absorption is low.
In our research we apply monodisperse silicon NPs which have been separated by a density gradient method after a laser ablation synthesis [7] to investigate optical effects responsible for the efficiency improvement of PSCs. The experimental analysis shows that the most optimal sizes of Si NPs for the mixed perovskite FAMAPblCh (bandgap is 1.53 eV) are in the range 140-160 nm. In this case the optimization of absorption in the perovskite layer is around 500-800 nm range, where the Mie resonances in NPs are not completely damped but contribute to additional light trapping and scattering. By several theoretical approaches we have designed a cell with optimized light energy harvesting, leading to improvement of both short circuit current Jsc «1.2 mA/cm2 and open circuit voltage Voc ~ 0.02 V. The highest achieved efficiency was 20.5% when solar cells included Si NPs with size of 150-170 nm. The fill factor (FF) was 79.4%, Jsc = 23.77 mA/cm2 and Voc = 1.107 V. A standard solar cell had a maximum 18.99% of efficiency with Jsc of 22.62 mA/cm2 and Voc of 1.089 V, at the same time, whereas FF value is almost unchanged (79.8%).
Our results can be useful not only for further optimization of perovskite solar cells, but also pave the way for improvement of a broader range of photovoltaic devices with integrated Mie-resonant NPs.
[1] Z. Huang, et al, Suppressed ion migration in reduced-dimensional perovskites improves operating stability, ACS Energy Letters 4.7 (2019): 1521-1527.
[2] A. Yakusheva, et al, Photo Stabilization of p-i-n Perovskite Solar Cells with Bathocuproine: MXene, Small 18.37 (2022): 2201730.
[3] A. Furasova, et al, Nanophotonics for perovskite solar cells, Advanced Photonics Research 3.9 (2022): 2100326.
[4] P.A. Dmitriev, et al, Laser fabrication of crystalline silicon nanoresonators from an amorphous film for low-loss all-dielectric nanophotonics, Nanoscale 8.9 (2016): 5043-5048.
[5] L. Ding, et al, Silicon Nanoantennas for Ultra-Compact, High-Speed and Low-Power Consumption Electro-Optic Modulators, Laser & Photonics Reviews (2024): 2301068.
[6] A. Furasova, et al, Resonant silicon nanoparticles for enhanced light harvesting in halide perovskite solar cells, Advanced Optical Materials 6.21 (2018): 1800576.
[7] A. Furasova, et al, Photovoltaic parameters improvement via size control of monodisperse Mie-resonant nanoparticles in perovskite solar cells, Chemical Engineering Journal (2024): 152771.
