Related papers: Thermodynamic limits to energy conversion in solar…
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…
The atmospheres of planets (including Earth) and the outer layers of stars have often been treated in radiative transfer as plane-parallel media, instead of spherical shells, which can lead to inaccuracy, e.g. limb darkening. We give an…
Cu2ZnSn(S, Se)4 (CZTSSe) is one of most competitive photovoltaic materials for its earth-abundant reserves, environmental friendliness, and high stability.The quality of CZTSSe absorber determines the power-conversion efficiency (PCE) of…
The thermoelectric (TE) properties of a material are dramatically altered when electron-electron interactions become the dominant scattering mechanism. In the degenerate hydrodynamic regime, the thermal conductivity is reduced and becomes a…
Magnetic particle hyperthermia, in which colloidal nanostructures are exposed to an alternating magnetic field, is a promising approach to cancer therapy. Unfortunately, the clinical efficacy of hyperthermia has not yet been optimized.…
We derive the thermodynamic limits of harvesting power from the outgoing thermal radiation from the ambient to the cold outer space. The derivations are based on a duality relation between thermal engines that harvest solar radiation and…
In future solar cell technologies, the thermodynamic Shockley-Queisser limit for solar-to-current conversion in traditional p-n junctions could potentially be overcome with a bulk photovoltaic effect by creating an inversion broken symmetry…
Calibration ab initio (direct coupled cluster) calculations including basis set extrapolation, relativistic effects, inner-shell correlation, and an anharmonic zero-point energy, predict the total atomization energy at 0 K of SO$_3$ to be…
The chemical potential of adsorbed or confined fluids provides insight into their unique thermodynamic properties and determines adsorption isotherms. However, it is often difficult to compute this quantity from atomistic simulations using…
First we discuss some early work of Ulrike Feudel on structure formation in nonlinear reactions including ions and the efficiency of the conversion of chemical into electrical energy. Then we give some survey about energy conversion from…
We evaluate the limiting efficiency of full and partial solar spectrum harvesting via the process of internal photoemission in Au-semiconductor Schottky junctions. Our results based on the ab initio calculations of the electron density of…
The bulk photovoltaic effect (BPVE) leads to directed photo-currents and photo-voltages in bulk materials. Unlike photo-voltages in p-n junction solar cells that are limited by carrier recombination to values below the bandgap energy of the…
The photoelectric conversion efficiency of a solar cell is dependent on its temperature. When the solar radiation is incident on the photovoltaics (PV) panel, a large portion of it is absorbed by the underlying material which increases its…
A galvanic displacement reaction-based, room-temperature "dip-and-dry" technique is demonstrated for fabricating selectively solar-absorbing plasmonic nanostructure-coated foils (PNFs). The technique, which allows for facile tuning of the…
Usually photons are not conserved in their interaction with matter. Consequently, for the thermodynamics of photons, while we have a concept of temperature for energy conservation, there is no equivalent chemical potential for particle…
We fabricate photo-anodes by transferring anodic TiO2 nanotube membranes in tube-top-down configuration on FTO glass, and use them for constructing frontside illuminated dye-sensitized solar cells. Prior to solar cell construction, the…
Understanding the connections between information and thermodynamics has been among the most visible applications of stochastic thermodynamics. While recent theoretical advances have established that the second law of thermodynamics sets…
Broadband, efficient and fast conversion of light to electricity is crucial for sensing and clean energy. Here we reveal the largest observed bulk photo-voltaic effect (BPVE), an intrinsic mechanism predicted to be ultrafast and exceed the…
We analyze standard theoretical models of solar energy conversion developed to study solar cells and photosynthetic systems. We show that the assumption that the energy transfer to the reaction center/electric circuit is through a decay…
Low-dimensional semiconductors have been widely exploited in thermoelectric energy conversion for high efficiencies due to their suppressed lattice thermal conduction, sharply defined electronic density of states, and tunable…