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Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have emerged recently as promising candidates for next generation photovoltaics and have reached power conversion efficiencies of 25.2%. Among the various methods to advance solar cell technologies, the implementation of nanoparticles with plasmonic effects is an alternative way for photon and charge carrier management. Surface plasmons at the interfaces or surfaces of sophisticated metal nanostructures are able to interact with electromagnetic radiation. The properties of surface plasmons can be tuned specifically by controlling the shape, size, and dielectric environment of the metal nanostructures. Thus, incorporating metallic nanostructures in solar cells is reported as a possible strategy to explore the enhancement of energy conversion efficiency mainly in semi‐transparent solar cells. One particularly interesting option is PSCs with plasmonic structures enable thinner photovoltaic absorber layers without compromising their thickness while maintaining a high light harvest. In this Review, the effects of plasmonic nanostructures in electron transport material, perovskite absorbers, the hole transport material, as well as enhancement of effective refractive index of the medium and the resulting solar cell performance are presented. Aside from providing general considerations and a review of plasmonic nanostructures, the current efforts to introduce these plasmonic structures into semi‐transparent solar cells are outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spray deposition is emerging as an attractive low-cost and high throughput method for organic solar cell (OSC) fabrication. In this letter, we demonstrate that a highly conductive formulation of poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrenesulfonate) can be spray deposited to form the top electrode for an OSC. An inverted solar cell fabricated in this way with a blend of poly(3-hexylthiophene) and [6,6]-phenyl-C61 butyric acid methyl ester as the active layer achieved a power conversion efficiency of 2.0% under AM 1.5 100 mW/cm2 illumination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Structural properties and solar cells performance of sputter grown sub-micrometer thick (~600 nm) Cu 2 ZnSnS 4 (CZTS) films are investigated for low cost and large scale photovoltaic deployment. The CZTS films are deposited using single quaternary stoichiometric target at room temperature. X-ray diffraction, micro-Raman spectroscopy, and scanning electron microscopy measurements were carried out to investigate the structural property and secondary phase formation. The intense phonon peak at 334 cm −1 in the visible Raman spectra confirms the deposition of single phase CZTS films. CZTS-based thin film solar cells show excellent performance with open circuit voltage ~600 mV and over all cell efficiency of ~3.07%, exhibiting commercial potential toward large scale fabrication of photovoltaic devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]