Related papers: Fundamentals of PV Efficiency: Limits for Light Ab…
Understanding the maximal enhancement of solar absorption in semiconductor materials by light trapping promises the development of affordable solar cells. However, the conventional Lambertian limit is only valid for idealized material…
We study light absorption by a dipolar absorber in a given environment, which can be a nanoantenna or any complex inhomogeneous medium. From first-principle calculations, we derive an upper bound for the absorption, which decouples the…
Luminescent solar concentrator (LSC) can absorb large-area incident sunlight, then emit luminescence with high quantum efficiency, which finally be collected by a small photovoltaic (PV) system. The light-harvesting area of the PV system is…
Light trapping in sub-wavelength semiconductor nanowires (NWs) offers a promising approach to simultaneously reducing material consumption and enhancing photovoltaic performance. Nevertheless, the absorption efficiency of a NW, defined by…
The Shockley-Queisser limit describes the maximum solar energy conversion efficiency achievable for a particular material and is the standard by which new photovoltaic technologies are compared. This limit is based on the principle of…
Understanding the thermodynamics of radiation and the quantum-mechanical interactions between light and matter is important both for theoretical purposes and for technological advances, such as determining the limits of key processes like…
A simple perfect absorption structure is proposed to achieve the high efficiency light absorption of monolayer molybdenum disulfide (MoS 2 ) by the critical coupling mechanism of guided resonances. The results of numerical simulation and…
We theoretically demonstrate the fundamental limit in volume for given materials (e.g. Si, a-Si, CdTe) to fully absorb the solar radiation above bandgap, which we refer as solar superabsorption limit. We also point out the general…
Epitaxially-grown quantum well and quantum dot solar cells suffer from weak light absorption, strongly limiting their performance. Light trapping based on optical resonances is particularly relevant for such devices to increase light…
Absorption and scattering of electromagnetic waves by dielectric media are of fundamental importance in many branches of physics. In this Letter we analytically derived the ultimate upper limits for the absorbed and scattered powers by any…
Synthetic perovskites with photovoltaic properties open a new era in solar photovoltaics. Due to high optical absorption perovskite-based thin-film solar cells are usually considered as fully absorbing solar radiation on condition of ideal…
Great achievements in last five years, such as record-efficient amorphous/crystalline silicon heterojunction (SHJ) solar cells and cutting-edge perovskite/SHJ tandem solar cells, place hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) at the…
In this review, we present and discussed the main trends in photovoltaics with emphasize on the conversion efficiency limits. The theoretical limits of various photovoltaics device concepts are presented and analyzed using a flexible…
Because of its low-cost, silicon is the standard material for photovoltaic conversion. Yet, its band-edge absorption spectrum is narrower than the spectrum of the solar radiation, which reduces its conversion efficiency. In this paper, it…
Photovoltaic materials are recognized for their potential as sustainable energy sources that enable the conversion between light and electrical energy. However, solar cells have been unable to surpass the theoretical limit of 32%, known as…
Absorbed sunlight in a solar cell produces electrons and holes. But, at the open circuit condition, the carriers have no place to go. They build up in density and, ideally, they emit external fluorescence that exactly balances the incoming…
A fundamental issue that limits the efficiency of many photoelectrochemical systems is that the photon absorption length is typically much longer than the electron diffusion length. Various photon management schemes have been developed to…
Among several solutions to exploit solar energy, thermophotovoltaics (TPV) have been popularized and have known great breakthroughs during the past two decades. Yet, existing systems still have low efficiencies since the wavelength range of…
Metal halide perovskite nanowires (PrvNWs) have recently emerged as an interesting path for nanostructured solar cells. Here, we model the absorption of light in PrvNW arrays for varying diameter and length of the PrvNWs and period for the…
It is currently possible to fabricate crystalline silicon solar cells with the absorber thickness ranging from a few hundreds of micrometers (conventional wafer-based cells) to devices as thin as $1\,\mu\mathrm{m}$. In this work, we use a…