TY - GEN
T1 - The purpose of a photon ratchet in intermediate band solar cells
AU - Pusch, Andreas
AU - Yoshida, Megumi
AU - Hylton, Nicholas P.
AU - Mellor, Alexander
AU - Vaquero-Steiner, Anthony
AU - Phillips, Chris C.
AU - Hess, Ortwin
AU - Ekins-Daukes, Nicholas J.
N1 - Funding Information:
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This work was carried out with the financial support of the United Kingdom Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council under grant number EP/K029398/1. We thank Prof. Y. Okada for useful discussions.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 IEEE.
PY - 2017
Y1 - 2017
N2 - The intermediate band solar cell (IBSC) concept aims to improve upon the Shockley-Queisser limit for single bandgap solar cells by also making use of below bandgap photons through sequential absorption processes via an intermediate band (IB). In order for this concept to be translated into more efficient solar cells there are still challenges to overcome; one of the most important is the increased recombination (radiative as well as non-radiative) associated with the additional states in the bandgap. A proposal to mitigate those recombination losses is the introduction of a photon ratchet into the IBSC, which effectively trades some of the energy of the excited electrons against these recombination losses. We show here that this can lead to substantial improvements even in the radiative limiting efficiency, where no non-radiative recombination is taken into account and that this advantage is especially prominent for IBSCs in which the transitions into and out of the IB are not very absorptive, a case commonly encountered for current IBSC proposals.
AB - The intermediate band solar cell (IBSC) concept aims to improve upon the Shockley-Queisser limit for single bandgap solar cells by also making use of below bandgap photons through sequential absorption processes via an intermediate band (IB). In order for this concept to be translated into more efficient solar cells there are still challenges to overcome; one of the most important is the increased recombination (radiative as well as non-radiative) associated with the additional states in the bandgap. A proposal to mitigate those recombination losses is the introduction of a photon ratchet into the IBSC, which effectively trades some of the energy of the excited electrons against these recombination losses. We show here that this can lead to substantial improvements even in the radiative limiting efficiency, where no non-radiative recombination is taken into account and that this advantage is especially prominent for IBSCs in which the transitions into and out of the IB are not very absorptive, a case commonly encountered for current IBSC proposals.
KW - Amorphous materials
KW - Charge carrier lifetime
KW - Photovoltaic cells
KW - Silicon
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85048505320&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/PVSC.2017.8366014
DO - 10.1109/PVSC.2017.8366014
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85048505320
T3 - 2017 IEEE 44th Photovoltaic Specialist Conference, PVSC 2017
SP - 2536
EP - 2537
BT - 2017 IEEE 44th Photovoltaic Specialist Conference, PVSC 2017
PB - IEEE
T2 - 44th IEEE Photovoltaic Specialist Conference, PVSC 2017
Y2 - 25 June 2017 through 30 June 2017
ER -
