The last decade witnessed extensive research on perovskite based optoelectronic devices like solar cells and light emitting diodes. As a consequence, perovskite solar cells now report efficiencies comparable to champion c-Si solar cells. Interestingly, these devices can be fabricated on flexible substrates and hold immense potential towards building integrated applications. It is well known that a solar cell offers best performance when it is limited by bimolecular recombination while practical solar cells are often limited by trap assisted recombination.

In this seminar, we discuss about the first ever experimental demonstration of perovskite solar cells limited by bimolecular recombination. This exciting result allows us to explore a few other fundamental questions related to solar cells like: What are the practical limits of efficiency? Is it possible to unambiguously identify the dominant recombination mechanism in solar cells? Can one back extract recombination parameters from terminal electrical characteristics? These issues are resolved through a coherent interpretation of a wide range of characterization techniques (dark JV, Suns Voc, transient and steady state intensity dependent measurements, electroluminescence, etc.).