The European Solar Energy Testing Institute (ESTI) has confirmed test results for a new perovskite/silicon tandem solar cell at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). The KAUST researchers claim that this technology is a step forward compared to other perovskite-silicon cells they have developed.

Scientists led by KAUST in Saudi Arabia have achieved a power conversion efficiency of 33.2% for perovskite/silicon tandem solar cells. KAUST professor Stefaan De Wolf made the announcement on the school's LinkedIn account.

"I am very pleased to announce that the monolithic perovskite/silicon tandem solar cell developed at the KAUST Solar Energy Center has achieved a certified power conversion efficiency of 33.2%," he said. technology is currently the most efficient dual-junction solar cell technology under standard lighting conditions, surpassing even III-Vs technology."

The European Solar Testing Institute (ESTI) has certified this result.

“The efficiency of 33.2% has just been added to the NREL chart,” he told pv magazine. “These cells are really a further upgrade to our legacy equipment.”

In January this year, KAUST announced that the power conversion efficiency of perovskite-silicon tandem solar cells based on textured silicon wafers was 28.1%. In August 2022, the company claimed an efficiency of 26.2% for monolithic perovskite-silicon tandem photovoltaic devices.

In December 2021, researchers at KAUST achieved a power conversion efficiency of 28.2% on a tandem solar cell with an area of about 1 cm2 based on n-i-p perovskite stacked on a silicon heterojunction.

The research group recently announced an inverted perovskite-silicon tandem solar cell, placing a 1-nanometer magnesium fluoride (MgFx) interlayer between the perovskite layer and the hole transport layer (HTL) to reduce the voltage loss.