At NCPRE, too, this is an important area of activity, and we have obtained significant results which have been reported in previous issues of the Newsletter. It is also possible to have perovskite tandem solar cells with other bottom cells, for example a thin-film CdTe cell. This is particularly important for India since First Solar has already established a CdTe manufacturing facility in Chennai, and a perovskite/CdTe tandem would not suffer from supply-chain issues as a perovskite/Si tandem might. The NCPRE thin-film PV research group led by Prof. Dinesh Kabra has been working on perovskite/CdTe tandems also, and the paper has been accepted for publication in the journal ACS Energy Letters. We have achieved an excellent 24.2% efficiency for such a tandem solar cell using thin-film bottom-cell technology. Our innovation leverages NIR-transparent perovskite solar cells, which transmit NIR radiation to the bottom CdTe solar cell. The individual power conversion efficiencies (PCE) of the CdTe and NIR-transparent perovskite solar cells were 19.56% and 18.30% respectively, but when combined in a 4-terminal tandem configuration, the efficiency increases to an impressive 24.2%.
4-T CdTe/Perovskite Thin Film Tandem Solar Cell