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High irradiance performance of metal halide perovskites for concentrator photovoltaics

Nature Energy volume 3, pages 855–861 (2018)Cite this article

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A Publisher Correction to this article was published on 13 August 2018

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Abstract

Traditionally, III–V multi-junction cells have been used in concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) applications, which deliver extremely high efficiencies but have failed to compete with ‘flat-plate’ silicon technologies owing to cost. Here, we assess the feasibility of using metal halide perovskites for CPVs, and we evaluate their device performance and stability under concentrated light. Under simulated sunlight, we achieve a peak efficiency of 23.6% under 14 Suns (that is, 14 times the standard solar irradiance), as compared to 21.1% under 1 Sun, and measure 1.26 V open-circuit voltage under 53 Suns, for a material with a bandgap of 1.63 eV. Importantly, our encapsulated devices maintain over 90% of their original efficiency after 150 h aging under 10 Suns at maximum power point. Our work reveals the potential of perovskite CPVs, and may lead to new PV deployment strategies combining perovskites with low-concentration factor and lower-accuracy solar tracking systems.

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Fig. 1: Perovskite-based concentrator photovoltaics.
Fig. 2: CPV device performances.
Fig. 3: Charge-carrier diffusion length and recombination processes.
Fig. 4: CPV stability under concentrated light.

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Change history

  • 13 August 2018

    When this Article was originally published, an old version of the associated Supplementary Information file was uploaded. This has now been replaced.

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Acknowledgements

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under both grant agreement no. 763977 of the PerTPV project and grant agreement no. 675867 of the INFORM project, and AFOSR through project FA9550-15-1-0115. B.W. acknowledges the European Commission for Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions individual fellowship (REA grant no. 706552-APPEL). We also thank R. Warren and R. Xiang for helping with light intensity measurements and illustrations.

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  1. These authors contributed equally: Zhiping Wang, Qianqian Lin.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Clarendon Laboratory, Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Zhiping Wang, Qianqian Lin, Bernard Wenger, M. Greyson Christoforo, Yen-Hung Lin, Matthew T. Klug, Michael B. Johnston, Laura M. Herz & Henry J. Snaith

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  1. Zhiping Wang
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Contributions

Z.W., Q.L. and H.J.S. conceived of the project. Z.W. designed the experiments and fabricated the devices and thin film samples. Z.W. performed the thermogravimetric and X-ray diffraction measurements and analysed the data. Q.L. carried out photoluminescence and external quantum efficiency measurements. Z.W. and Q.L. performed light intensity measurements. B.W. and M.G.C. helped with light intensity and four-wire measurements. Y.-H.L. contributed to hole-transporting layer deposition. M.T.K. performed spectral mismatch corrections. L.M.H. and M.B.J. supervised the optical spectroscopy experiments. H.J.S. supervised the whole project. Z.W. wrote the first draft of the paper. All authors discussed the results and contributed to the writing of the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Henry J. Snaith.

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Competing interests

H.J.S. is a co-founder and CSO of Oxford PV Ltd, a company that is commercializing perovskite PV technologies. All other authors declare no competing interests.

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Supplementary Figures 1–18, Supplementary Notes 1–6, Supplementary Tables 1–2, Supplementary References

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Wang, Z., Lin, Q., Wenger, B. et al. High irradiance performance of metal halide perovskites for concentrator photovoltaics. Nat Energy 3, 855–861 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-018-0220-2

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