Review on perovskite silicon tandem solar cells: Status and prospects 2T, 3T and 4T for real world conditions

Highlights: • Importance of various device designs for different functional layers used in tandem cells. • Crucial role of cell design for efficient light-management. • R&D undertaken in real world conditions and its chances for scaleup. • Trends in 3-Terminal tandem devices and its prospects. Successful integration of perovskite cell with silicon cell to form a tandem solar device has shown tremendous potential for outperforming the state-of-the-art single junction silicon devices. This tandem approach has enabled high efficiencies up to 29% within a short period of time and one can find sufficient work and various strategies being applied to enhance the efficiency in these devices. At this point in time, a compilation of all these studies, with a critical review and perspectives is extremely relevant and essential. With this motivation the present review has been brought out, with all achievements attained so far by optimizing various components namely the electron/hole transport layer and absorber layer, functional layers in bottom cell, transparent contacts, deposition techniques and the innovative light management tactics used. The review also outlines the solutions proposed by various researchers to overcome the challenges that restrict the efficiency of tandem strategy in three distinct configurations, namely, monolithic (2T), four terminal (4T) and three terminal (3T) configurations. Finally, the perspectives provide real insights into choosing suitable materials, techniques and methods and achieve efficiencies near and beyond Shockley Queisser limit, thus spiking high hopes that this device would be the dominant energy conversion device in future.