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One of the main approaches to inhibit carrier cooling in semiconductor systems enabling the study of hot carrier solar cell protocols is the use of concentrated illumination to obtain high power densities and create a phonon bottleneck.…
This paper considers multiterminal networks with energy harvesting transmitter nodes that are also capable of wirelessly transferring energy to or receiving energy from other nodes in the network. In particular, the jointly optimal transmit…
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 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…
I propose a design strategy to enhance the performance of heat engine via absorption of thermal energy from the channel region. The absorption of thermal energy can be actuated by inelastic processes and may be accomplished by an energy…
We consider the setting of a sensor that consists of a speed-scalable processor, a battery, and a solar cell that harvests energy from its environment at a time-invariant recharge rate. The processor must process a collection of jobs of…
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…
Multi-terminal multi-junction solar cells (MJSC) offer higher efficiency potential than series connected (two-terminal) ones. In addition, for terrestrial applications, the efficiency of multi-terminal solar cells is less sensitive to solar…
The efficiencies/coefficients of performance of three-terminal devices, comprising two electronic terminals and a thermal one (e.g., a boson bath) are discussed. In particular, two procedures are analyzed. (a) One of the electronic…
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…
The mechanism of electron-hole separation in organic solar cells is currently hotly debated. Recent experimental work suggests that these charges can separate on extremely short timescales (<100 fs). This can be understood in terms of…
Photogalvanic solar cells, the original dye based solar cell, have yet to fulfill their promise as a low fabrication cost, scalable energy conversion system. The efficient performance of photogalvanic cells relies on high dye solubility and…
Harnessing non-equilibrium hot carriers from plasmonic metal nanostructures constitutes a vibrant research field. It promises to enable control of activity and selectivity of photochemical reactions, especially for solar fuel generation.…
Strong electron-electron interactions in graphene are expected to result in multiple-excitation generation by the absorption of a single photon. We show that the impact of carrier multiplication on photocurrent response is enhanced by very…
The conversion of light into free electron-hole pairs constitutes the key process in the fields of photodetection and photovoltaics. The efficiency of this process depends on the competition of different relaxation pathways and can be…
Future generations of photoelectrodes for solar fuel generation must employ inexpensive, earth-abundant absorber materials in order to provide a large-scale source of clean energy. These materials tend to have poor electrical transport…
Conventional thermionic power generators and refrigerators utilize a barrier in the direction of transport to selectively transmit high-energy electrons. Here we show that the energy spectrum of electrons transmitted in this way is not…
The spatial collection efficiency portrays the driving forces and loss mechanisms in photovoltaic and photoelectrochemical devices. It is defined as the fraction of photogenerated charge carriers created at a specific point within the…
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…
It is thought that nature already exploits quantum mechanical properties to increase the efficiency of solar energy harvesting devices. So, the operation of these devices can be enhanced by clever design of a nanoscopic, quantum mechanical…