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Hot carrier solar cells allow potential efficiency close to the thermodynamical limit in ideal conditions. However, the feasability of such devices has not been clearly stated so far and only ideal cells were considered in previous studies.…
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…
Hot-carrier solar cells are envisioned to utilize energy filtering to extract power from photogenerated electron-hole pairs before they thermalize with the lattice, and thus potentially offer higher power conversion efficiency compared to…
In conventional solar cell semiconductor materials (predominantly Si) photons with energy higher than the band gap initially generate hot electrons and holes, which subsequently cool down to the band edge by phonon emission. Due to the…
In conventional solar cells, photogenerated carriers lose part of their energy before they can be extracted to make electricity. The aim of hot-carrier solar cells is to extract the carriers before this energy loss, thereby turning more…
This work presents a detailed analysis of the photothermionic-photovoltaic hybrid solar device. The electrons in this hybrid device gain energy from both the solar photons and thermophotons generated within the device, and hence the device…
Extraction of charge carriers from a hot carrier solar cell using energy selective contacts, and the impact on limiting power conversion efficiency is analyzed. It is shown that assuming isentropic conversion of carrier heat into voltage…
Hot Carrier solar cells have long been recognized as an attractive contender in the search for high efficiency photovoltaic devices but their fabrication requires solution of two important material challenges: finding materials with…
Hot carrier solar cell is proposed where charge carriers are cooled adiabatically in the charge transport layers adjoining the absorber. The device resembles an ideal thermoelectric converter where thermopower, and therefore also carrier…
We propose a solar thermal energy conversion system consisting of a solar absorber, a thermoradiative cell or negative illumination photodiode, and a photovoltaic cell. Because it is a heat engine, this system can also be paired with…
Methods of exceeding the detailed balance limit for a single junction solar cell have included down-converting high energy photons to produce two photons; and carrier multiplication, whereby high energy photons produce more than one…
Solar cells employing quantum wells can enhance the light absorption but suffer from the difficulty in photogenerated carrier extraction. Here, we analyzed the spectral response and the photocarrier collection mechanism of p-i-n multiple…
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…
We describe surface patterning strategies that permit high photon-collection efficiency together with high carrier-collection efficiency in an ultra-thin planar heterojunction organic photovoltaic cell. Optimized designs reach up to 50%…
Hot carrier solar cells (HCSCs), harvesting excess energy of the hot carriers generated by above-band-gap photoexcitation, is crucial for pushing the solar cell efficiency beyond the Shockley Queisser limit, which is challenging to realize…
Charge selective interlayers are crucial in thin-film photovoltaics, such as organic and Perovskite solar cells. Charge transporting layers (doped and undoped) constitute perhaps the most important class of charge selective interlayers;…
A design tool was formulated for optimizing the efficiency of inorganic, thin-film, photovoltaic solar cells. The solar cell can have multiple semiconductor layers in addition to antireflection coatings, passivation layers, and buffer…
Selecting suitable charge transport layers and suppressing non-radiative recombination at interfaces to the absorber layer are vital to maximize the efficiency of halide perovskite solar cells. In this work, high-quality perovskite thin…
In optoelectronic devices such as solar cells and photodetectors, a portion of electron-hole pairs are generated as so called hot carriers with an excess energy that is typically lost as heat. The long standing aim to harvest this excess…
Multi-junction photovoltaics provide a logical method of increasing the utilization of solar power for a given area. However, their current design and fabrication methods invoke numerous material and cost complexities that limit their…