Plasmonic Enhancement of Perovskite Photovoltaics

ongoing

Achieving critical EU goals of ubiquitous carbon neutrality and a smooth green energy transition requires the development of highly efficient and low-cost photovoltaic technology. Perovskite solar cells are the most exciting recent breakthrough in renewable energy technology due to their low cost, ease of manufacture, and high efficiency. However, the most promising perovskite compositions, such as PbSn, are plagued by low light harvesting efficiency. Optically active nanoparticles, such as gold and silver, have been investigated to increase the light absorption of PbSn perovskite, but are chemically unstable and expensive. To address this pressing concern, PlasmonKITE proposes the computational and experimental coupling of abundant, optically active, and highly stable nanoparticles to lightweight and flexible all-perovskite tandem solar devices, enhancing their light harvesting ability and achieving next-generation solar cells with broad applications. Photophysical modeling will be employed to determine the optimal nanoparticle geometries to maximize the light harvesting enhancement within the surrounding perovskite material. Then, the specified nanoparticles will be synthesized and embedded in perovskite films which will be tested for stability and photoconversion efficiency. Finally, model perovskite devices will be used as building blocks to build tandem all-perovskite solar cells which absorb efficiently across the visible and near-IR spectrum. The realization of this new technology is theorized to achieve unprecedented performance at a lower cost than conventional silicon photovoltaics, accelerating the green energy transition.