Low-cost and lightweight approaches for solar cells and their applications

Tandem solar cells consisting of a crystalline silicon bottom cell underneath a high-bandgap thinfilm top cell are the most promising technology path towards 30% efficient flat-plate PV modules under 1-sun illumination. This contribution presents the status and trends of thin-film on silicon tandem solar cell research in Singapore. The research is conducted as a joint effort of three institutes from three different universities (SERIS at NUS, ERI@N at NTU and SMART at MIT), whereby SMART and ERI@N focus on the development of the thin-film top cells (III-V and perovskites, respectively), while SERIS develops the c-Si bottom cell as well as the cell integration and interconnection concepts for PV module fabrication. Cell efficiencies of close to 20% and 25%, respectively, have so far been achieved for perovskite on silicon and GaAs on silicon tandem solar cells. Silicon-Based Multi-Junction Tandem Solar Cells Xiaodan Zhang * , Xin Yao, Shijie Zhu, Bofei Liu, Lisha Bai, Jia Fang , Tiantian Li , Changchun Wei, Qian Huang , Jian Ni , Dekun Zhang, Guofu Hou, Xinliang Chen, Shengzhi Xu, Huizhi Ren, Guangcai Wang, Yi Ding, Yuelong Li, Baozhang Li, Ying Zhao a Institute of Photoelectronic Thin Film Devices and Technology of Nankai University, Tianjin 300071, P. R. China b Key Laboratory of Photoelectronic Thin Film Devices and Technology of Tianjin, Tianjin 300071, P. R. China c Key Laboratory of Optical Information and Technology of Ministry of Education, Tianjin 300071, P. R. China d Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemical Science and Engineering (Tianjin), Tianjin 300072, China