Related papers: Hot Carrier Solar Cells : In the Making ?
Carrier thermalization in a superlattice solar cell made of polar semiconductors is studied theoretically by considering a minimal model where electron-phonon scattering is the principal channel of carrier energy loss. Importantly, the…
Selective solar absorbers (SSAs) with high performance are the key to concentrated solar power systems. Optical metamaterials are emerging as a promising strategy to enhance selective photon absorption, however, the high-temperature…
Studies of emerging photovoltaics, such as organic and perovskite solar cells, have recently shown that the separation of photo-generated charge carriers is correlated with non-thermal, coherent oscillations within the illuminated device.…
Polymer solar cells are considered as very promising candidates for development of photovoltaics of the future. They are cheap and easy to fabricate, however, up to now, they possess fundamental drawback, low effectiveness. In the most…
There remains wide interest in solar cells being made using inexpensive materials and simple device manufacturing techniques to harvest ever-increasing amounts of energy. New semiconductor materials and new quantum nanostructures are…
A high theoretical efficiency of 47.2% was achieved by a novel combination of In0.51Ga0.49P, GaAs, In0.24Ga0.76As and In0.19Ga0.81Sb subcell layers in a simulated quadruple junction solar cell under 1 sun concentration. The electronic…
Light trapping for solar cells can reduce production cost and improve energy conversion efficiency. Understanding some of the basic theoretical constraints on light trapping is therefore of fundamental importance. Here, we develop a general…
The hot carrier solar cell (HCSC) concept has been proposed to overcome the Shockley Queisser limit of a single p-n junction solar cell by harvesting carriers before they have lost their surplus energy. A promising family of materials for…
Nano-scaled metallic or dielectric structures may provide various ways to trap light into thin-film solar cells for improving the conversion efficiency. In most schemes, the textured active layers are involved into light trapping structures…
An ideal solar thermal absorber has a sharp transition between high and low absorptance at the wavelength where the blackbody emissive power begins to exceed the solar irradiance. However, most real selective absorbers have a fairly broad…
Heterostructures based on atomically thin semiconductors are considered a promising emerging technology for the realization of ultrathin and ultralight photovoltaic solar cells on flexible substrates. Much progress has been made in recent…
Among the parameters determining the efficiency of an organic solar cell, the open-circuit voltage ($V_\text{OC}$) is the one with most room for improvement. Existing models for the description of $V_\text{OC}$ assume that photogenerated…
We report a low cost and scalable method to synthesize solar selective nanofluids from 'used engine oil'. The as-prepared nanofluids exhibit excellent long-term stability and photo-thermal conversion efficiency. Moreover, these were found…
For many years the faith of organic photovoltaics has been linked to the one of fullerene, since fullerene has been considered the electron-acceptor of choice in bulk heterojunctions solar cells. In the last years, the number of molecules…
Solar energy promises a viable solution to meet the ever-increasing power demand by providing a clean, renewable energy alternative to fossil fuels. For solar thermophotovoltaics (STPV), high-temperature absorbers and emitters with strong…
Hot carrier effect, a phenomenon where charge carriers generated by photon absorption remain energetic by not losing much energy, has been one of the leading strategies in increasing solar cell efficiency. Nanostructuring offers an…
The incoherence of sunlight has long been suspected to have an impact on solar cell energy conversion efficiency, although the extent of this is unclear. Existing computational methods used to optimize solar cell efficiency under incoherent…
Prototypes for hot-carrier solar cells based on type-II InAs/AlAsSb multiple quantum wells are examined for AC photoconductivity as a function of lattice temperature and photoexcitation energy to determine the photoexcited charge carrier…
III-V materials show a wide range of gaps making them ideal for the design of high efficiency solar cells. This chapter reviews relevant growth methods and material properties of these materials and discusses methods of combining…
A p-n junction maintained at above ambient temperature can work as a heat engine, converting some of the supplied heat into electricity and rejecting entropy by interband emission. Such thermoradiative cells have potential to harvest…