Junction solar cells with improved carrier and photon management

Nature ( 2026 ) Cite this article
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Perovskite-silicon triple-junction photovoltaics offer efficiency gains beyond dual-junction devices, but at the expense of added complexity (1) .

Here, we address two key bottlenecks in perovskite-silicon-based triple-junction solar cells: reduced open-circuit voltage in the wide-bandgap top-cell and limited photocurrent generation in the middle-cell (1, 2) .

A non-volatile additive, 4-hydroxybenzylamine, regulates wide-bandgap perovskite crystallization and passivates defects, promoting oriented growth and suppressing non-radiative recombination.

Together with improved energy-level alignment, this yields open-circuit voltages of up to 1.405 V and enhanced stability.

To overcome the current limitations in the middle-cell, a three-step deposition strategy enables the formation of thick, low-bandgap perovskite absorbers while preserving microstructural integrity and enhancing electron extraction.

In addition, low-refractive-index SiO x nanoparticles that accumulate in the front valleys of the textured silicon bottom-cell act as an optical middle-reflector, enhancing light absorption in the middle-cell.

These advances are then combined in 1 cm² perovskite-perovskite-silicon devices, achieving a certified efficiency of 30.02%.

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École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Institute of Electrical and Microengineering (IEM), Photovoltaics and Thin-Film Electronics Laboratory (PV-Lab), Neuchâtel, Switzerland
Kerem Artuk, Deniz Turkay, Austin Kuba, Julien Hurni, Joël Spitznagel, Hugo Quest, Jonas Diekmann, Chiara Ongaro, Mostafa Othman, Hilal Aybike Can, Mohammad Reza Golobostanfard, Umang Desai, Paul Remondeau, Antonin Faes, Aïcha Hessler-Wyser, Christophe Ballif & Christian M.

Wolff
Centre d’Electronique et de Microtechnique (CSEM), Neuchâtel, Switzerland
Kerem Artuk, Michele De Bastiani, Jun Zhao, Felipe Saenz, Lisa Champault, Antonin Faes, Quentin Jeangros & Christophe Ballif
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Chaire de Simulation à l′ Echelle Atomique (CSEA), Lausanne, Switzerland
Stefan Riemelmoser & Alfredo Pasquarello
Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN), The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia
School of Mathematics and Physics, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia
3S Swiss Solar Solutions AG, Gwatt (Thun), Switzerland
Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, Freiburg, Germany
Maryamsadat Heydarian, Oliver Fischer, Martin C.

Schubert & Florian Schindler
Chair for Photovoltaic Energy Conversion, Department of Sustainable Systems Engineering INATECH, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany
Laboratory for Thin Films and Photovoltaics, Empa—Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, Dübendorf, Switzerland
Huagui Lai, Jonathan S.

Austin & Fan Fu
Department of Chemistry, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA
Stefan Zeiske, Rafael López-Arteaga, Cheng Liu, Bin Chen & Edward H.

Sargent
Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL-VS), Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering (ISICXRDSAP), Sion, Switzerland
Physik und Optoelektronik weicher Materie, Institut für Physik und Astronomie, Universität Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany
Andrés-Felipe Castro-Méndez & Felix Lang
Materials Science and Engineering, Fulton Schools of Engineering, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, USA
Young Investigator Group, Robotized Material and Photovoltaic Engineering, Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie (HZB), Berlin, Germany
Thomas W.

Gries, Siddha Hill & Artem Musiienko
CD-SWEET beamline ALBA Synchrotron Light Source, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Spain
Photophysics and OptoElectronics, Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA
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Correspondence to Kerem Artuk or Christian M.

Wolff .

Supplementary Information (download PDF )
Supplementary Notes 1–14, Supplementary Tables 1–3, Supplementary Figs 1–82 and Supplementary References.

Peer Review File (download PDF )
DOI : https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10385-y