Research Projects

The progress of efficient technologies that produce renewable energy without leaving carbon foot print represent one of the key challenge to cater the ever-increasing per capita energy needs and sustain the societal and economic growth. The omnipresent silicon solar cells technology is one of the most promising candidate for renewable energy generation. However, over half a century the production cost has been a major issue for low economic countries like India. Presently, India is the major market for dumping solar panels from China, Korea, Taiwan and Malaysia etc. to cater its energy demand and in future, India will have to totally depend on these countries not only for raw materials but also for skilled manpower for upcoming new technologies. Recently (2022), India (Government and Industry) has given a push for manufacturing of silicon solar cell in the country. On the other hand, recently, in India, a substantial amount of promising work has been carried out in the synthesis and growth perovskite based solar cells. The efficiency of perovskite solar cell ~26.08% (@ lab scale) is at par to the matured silicon technology. The combination of Silicon and Perovskite will further boost the efficiency and market of efficient PV. This project aims at making India self-reliant by developing research facility on perovskite solar cells (PSCs) and silicon solar cells (SHJ) fabrication and thereafter utilizing the facility to explore the fundamental to tandem solar cell demonstration. With the intention of analyzing the impact of various microscopic factors on optoelectronic properties of absorber layers processed by spin coating technique, this proposal will focus on the integrated synthesis and application approach to develop new insights in the nucleation behavior of perovskite crystals with A-site cation/ and X-site anions variations and a systematic interfacial engineering to obtain stable perovskite solution. Thereafter the effect of solution on the film formation and investigations of pre-device structures towards optical and carriers transport properties will be the major focus. Further, a detailed analysis will be carried out to understand the effects of tunnel recombination junction, top and bottom cell current matching, defects passivation, grain growth, grain boundary defects. This work will provide an extensive insight into fundamental properties of perovskite and silicon heterojunction materials starting from synthesis and film deposition (analysis of A-site cations/ X- site anions modification and effect of additives, intrinsic layer thickness, defects passivation). Finally, a perovskite-silicon tandem solar cell using optimized process will be demonstrated with power conversion efficiency more than 25% ( 1 x 1 cm²). This demonstration will open up new possibilities for make in India drive and will attract the industry and academia for joint collaboration for upscaling of the tandem solar cell renewable energy generation technology.