While silicon solar cells dominate global photovoltaic energy production, their continued improvement is hindered by the single junction limit. One potential solution is to use molecular singlet exciton fission to generate two electrons from each absorbed high-energy photon. We demonstrate that the long-standing challenge of coupling molecular excited states to silicon solar cells can be overcome using sequential charge transfer. Combining zinc phthalocyanine, aluminum oxide, and a shallow junction crystalline silicon microwire solar cell, the peak charge generation efficiency per photon absorbed in tetracene is (138 +- 6)%, comfortably surpassing the quantum efficiency limit for conventional silicon solar cells and establishing a new, scalable approach to low cost, high efficiency photovoltaics.
@article{arxiv.2407.21093,
title = {Exciton Fission Enhanced Silicon Solar Cell},
author = {Narumi Nagaya and Kangmin Lee and Collin F. Perkinson and Aaron Li and Youri Lee and Xinjue Zhong and Sujin Lee and Leah P. Weisburn and Tomi K. Baikie and Moungi G. Bawendi and Troy Van Voorhis and William A. Tisdale and Antoine Kahn and Kwanyong Seo and Marc A. Baldo},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2407.21093},
year = {2025}
}