Project Team
Students
Jessica Hege
Mechanical Engineering
Penn State Harrisburg
Chase Sasala
Mechanical Engineering
Penn State Harrisburg
Faculty Mentors
Ola Rashwan
Penn State Harrisburg
Mechanical Engineering
Zoubeida Ounaies
Penn State University Park
Mechanical Engineering
Project
Project Video
Project Abstract
Solar energy is a key part of improving renewable energy and moving away from finite fuel sources. By increasing the efficiency of solar cells, in an affordable manner, it will be easier to move away from the use of finite fuel sources. Silicon has a limited efficiency, and an indirect band gap which limits its efficiency. Perovskite has a tunable band gap which makes it a good candidate to incorporate intermediate bands into the band gap. Inorganic perovskite has not been researched as much as organic-non-inorganic halide perovskites, however; cesium should increase stability of the perovskite and absorption, making it a good candidate to use in this research.
This research investigates the efficiency of CsPbBr3 perovskite cells based on the material, and concentration of quantum dots. The quantum dots were used to make an intermediate band within the perovskite. The intermediate band material used were lead sulfide and germanium, and the concentrations tested were 5%, 10%, and 15%. Intermediate band Cesium based perovskite solar cells should increase the absorption of NIR photons. The solar cells were modeled and simulated using ANSYS HFSS. The simulations were focused on optical analysis. The solar cell stack consists of gold, Spiro OMe TAD, CsPbBr3, titanium dioxide, and fluorine-doped tin oxide. The model had a hexagon shape that had 8nm base length, and a perovskite absorption layer of 450nm. The material, shape, and concentration were varied to test which configuration yielded the highest absorption. The inclusion of an intermediate band should increase absorption which will increase the short circuit current density which will increase the efficiency. It is expected for the efficiency of the perovskite solar cell to increase, which will provide other researchers with techniques and data to farther increase the efficiency.
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