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Title: Fundamental Efficiency Limit of Lead Iodide Perovskite Solar Cells

Abstract

Lead halide materials have seen a recent surge of interest from the photovoltaics community following the observation of surprisingly high photovoltaic performance, with optoelectronic properties similar to GaAs. This begs the question: What is the limit for the efficiency of these materials? It has been known that under 1-sun illumination the efficiency limit of crystalline silicon is ~29%, despite the Shockley–Queisser (SQ) limit for its bandgap being ~33%: the discrepancy is due to strong Auger recombination. In this article, we show that methyl ammonium lead iodide (MAPbI3) likewise has a larger than expected Auger coefficient. Auger nonradiative recombination decreases the theoretical external luminescence efficiency to ~95% at open-circuit conditions. The Auger penalty is much reduced at the operating point where the carrier density is less, producing an oddly high fill factor of ~90.4%. This compensates the Auger penalty and leads to a power conversion efficiency of 30.5%, close to ideal for the MAPbI3 bandgap.

Authors:
ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [1];  [1]
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  1. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California 94720, United States
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States); Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRC) (United States). Light-Material Interactions in Energy Conversion (LMI)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES); National Science Foundation (NSF)
OSTI Identifier:
1436011
Alternate Identifier(s):
OSTI ID: 1508762
Grant/Contract Number:  
AC02-05CH11231; SC0001293; DGE 1106400
Resource Type:
Published Article
Journal Name:
Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters
Additional Journal Information:
Journal Name: Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters Journal Volume: 9 Journal Issue: 7; Journal ID: ISSN 1948-7185
Publisher:
American Chemical Society
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
14 SOLAR ENERGY

Citation Formats

Pazos-Outón, Luis M., Xiao, T. Patrick, and Yablonovitch, Eli. Fundamental Efficiency Limit of Lead Iodide Perovskite Solar Cells. United States: N. p., 2018. Web. doi:10.1021/acs.jpclett.7b03054.
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Pazos-Outón, Luis M., Xiao, T. Patrick, & Yablonovitch, Eli. Fundamental Efficiency Limit of Lead Iodide Perovskite Solar Cells. United States. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpclett.7b03054
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Pazos-Outón, Luis M., Xiao, T. Patrick, and Yablonovitch, Eli. Wed . "Fundamental Efficiency Limit of Lead Iodide Perovskite Solar Cells". United States. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpclett.7b03054.
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@article{osti_1436011,
title = {Fundamental Efficiency Limit of Lead Iodide Perovskite Solar Cells},
author = {Pazos-Outón, Luis M. and Xiao, T. Patrick and Yablonovitch, Eli},
abstractNote = {Lead halide materials have seen a recent surge of interest from the photovoltaics community following the observation of surprisingly high photovoltaic performance, with optoelectronic properties similar to GaAs. This begs the question: What is the limit for the efficiency of these materials? It has been known that under 1-sun illumination the efficiency limit of crystalline silicon is ~29%, despite the Shockley–Queisser (SQ) limit for its bandgap being ~33%: the discrepancy is due to strong Auger recombination. In this article, we show that methyl ammonium lead iodide (MAPbI3) likewise has a larger than expected Auger coefficient. Auger nonradiative recombination decreases the theoretical external luminescence efficiency to ~95% at open-circuit conditions. The Auger penalty is much reduced at the operating point where the carrier density is less, producing an oddly high fill factor of ~90.4%. This compensates the Auger penalty and leads to a power conversion efficiency of 30.5%, close to ideal for the MAPbI3 bandgap.},
doi = {10.1021/acs.jpclett.7b03054},
journal = {Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters},
number = 7,
volume = 9,
place = {United States},
year = {2018},
month = {3}
}
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Journal Article:
Free Publicly Available Full Text
Publisher's Version of Record
https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpclett.7b03054
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Cited by: 152 works
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Figures / Tables:

Figure 1. Figure 1.: Band-to-band absorption coefficient of MAPbI3. The blue circles show the above-bandgap values obtained from measurements by Soufiani et al. Red circles represent the below-bandgap values extracted from Sadhanala et al. Below-bandgap data was fitted to an Urbach tail with an Urbach energy of 15 meV, as reported elsewhere,14,15more » and shifted 38 meV to match the data sets.« less
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