What are Tandem Solar Cells?

About Tandem Solar Cells:

• It consists of solar cells on top of each other. 
• There are several types of tandem cells that can be grouped mainly depending on materials used.
• Tandem cells are stacks of p-n junctions, each of which is formed from a semiconductor of different bandgap energy. Each responds to a different section of the solar spectrum.
• They are able to improve the efficiency of standard solar panels by splitting the light spectrum and optimising the harvesting of energy from each section into electricity.

What is Perovskite?

• A perovskite is a material that has the same crystal structure as the mineral calcium titanium oxide, the first-discovered perovskite crystal. 
• Generally, perovskite compounds have a chemical formula ABX3, where ‘A’ and ‘B’ represent cations and X is an anion that bonds to both.
• A large number of different elements can be combined together to form perovskite structures.
• Using this compositional flexibility, scientists can design perovskite crystals to have a wide variety of physical, optical, and electrical characteristics. 
• Perovskite crystals are found today in ultrasound machines, memory chips, and now – solar cells.

 

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Q1) What is a Solar Cell?

Solar cells, also called photovoltaic cells, convert the energy of light into electrical energy using the photovoltaic effect. Most of these are silicon cells, which have different conversion efficiencies and costs ranging from amorphous silicon cells (non-crystalline) to polycrystalline and monocrystalline (single crystal) silicon types.

Source: Solar panel efficiency to increase 50% with first production of ‘miracle’ tandem cells