Zr-Doped Indium Oxide (IZRO) Transparent Electrodes for Perovskite-Based Tandem Solar Cells

Parasitic absorption in transparent electrodes is one of the main roadblocks to enabling power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) for perovskite-based tandem solar cells beyond 30%. To reduce such losses and maximize light coupling, the broadband transparency of such electrodes should be improved, especially at the front of the device. Here, the excellent properties of Zr-doped indium oxide (IZRO) transparent electrodes for such applications, with improved near-infrared (NIR) response, compared to conventional tin-doped indium oxide (ITO) electrodes, are shown. Optimized IZRO films feature a very high electron mobility (up to ≈77 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹), enabling highly infrared transparent films with a very low sheet resistance (≈18 Ω □⁻¹ for annealed 100 nm films). For devices, this translates in a parasitic absorption of only ≈5% for IZRO within the solar spectrum (250–2500 nm range), to be compared with ≈10% for commercial ITO. Fundamentally, it is found that the high conductivity of annealed IZRO films is directly linked to promoted crystallinity of the indium oxide (In₂O₃) films due to Zr-doping. Overall, on a four-terminal perovskite/silicon tandem device level, an absolute 3.5 mA cm⁻² short-circuit current improvement in silicon bottom cells is obtained by replacing commercial ITO electrodes with IZRO, resulting in improving the PCE from 23.3% to 26.2%.