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Frequency up-conversion of few low-energy photons into a single high-energy photon, greatly contributes to imaging, light sources, detection and other fields of research. However, it offers negligible efficiency when up-converting many…
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…
A coupled optoelectronic model was implemented along with the differential evolution algorithm to assess the efficacy of grading the bandgap of the CZTSSe layer for enhancing the power conversion efficiency of thin-film CZTSSe solar cells.…
The purpose of this work is to look for a practical structure for application of quantum dots (QD) in solar cells in order to enhance sub-band gap photon absorption. We focuse on a stack of strain-compensated GaSb/GaAs type-II QDs. We…
Thermophotovoltaic systems in principle enable utilization of heat that is usually regarded as wasted energy. However, the wavelength selectivity of the thermal emitter required for high efficiencies is rather difficult to control with…
Intermediate band solar cells (IBSCs) pursue the increase in efficiency by absorbing below-bandgap energy photons while preserving the output voltage. Experimental IBSCs based on quantum dots have already demonstrated that both…
Frequency up-conversion of a few low-energy photons into a single high-energy photon contributes to imaging, light sources, and detection. However, the up-converting of many photons exhibits negligible efficiency. Up-conversion through…
This work investigates an alternative to thermophotovoltaics for harvesting thermal and optical energy via photon coupling and thermionic energy conversion. In this device, a heat source is radiatively coupled to a thermionic electron…
The selfconsistent model for the temperature dependence of photoconversion efficiency $\eta$ for highly efficient silicon solar cells (SCs) is developed. It is demonstrated that effect of the efficiency decrease due to increasing…
Compared to traditional pn-junction photovoltaics, hot carrier solar cells offer potentially higher efficiency by extracting work from the kinetic energy of photogenerated "hot carriers" before they cool to the lattice temperature. Hot…
Concentrating solar power, particularly parabolic trough system with solar concentrations less than 50, requires spectrally selective solar absorbers that are thermally stable at high temperatures of 400degC above to achieve high…
A new thermodynamic limit for the open circuit voltage of solar cells that includes thermalization is obtained in terms of photon entropy. A simple graphical construction makes it possible to link this limit to the existing limits for…
Hot-carrier solar cells use the photon excess energy, that is, the energy exceeding the absorber bandgap, to do additional work. These devices have the potential to beat the upper limit for the photovoltaic power conversion efficiency set…
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…
Power-conversion efficiency is a critical factor for the wider adoption of solar-cell modules. Thin-film solar cells are cheap and easy to manufacture, but their efficiencies are low compared to crystalline-silicon solar cells and need to…
A new approach is introduced to significantly improve the performance of thermophotovoltaic (TPV) systems by using low-dimensional thermal emitters and photovoltaic (PV) cells. By reducing the thickness of both the emitter and the PV cell,…
Light fusion increases the efficiency of solar cells by converting photons with lower energy than the bandgap into higher energy photons. The solar cell converts the product photons to current. We use Monte Carlo simulation to predict that…
A huge amount of thermal energy is available close to material surfaces in radiative and non-radiative states, which can be useful for matter characterization or for energy devices. One way to harness this near-field energy is to scatter it…
Solar photons possessing energy less than the band-gap of a single-junction solar cell can be utilized via the up-conversion (UC) of two or more photons, resulting in the emission of a single above-bandgap photon. Due to the non-linear…
A thermophotovoltaic (TPV) energy converter harnesses thermal photons emitted by a hot body and converts them to electricity. When the radiative heat exchange between the emitter and PV cell is spectrally monochromatic, the TPV system can…