Design, fabrication, and analysis of transparent silicon solar cells for multi‐junction assemblies

Kerestes, Christopher; Wang, Yi; Shreve, Kevin; Mutitu, James G.; Creazzo, Tim; Murcia, Paola; Barnett, Allen

doi:10.1002/pip.1232

Cited by 7 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…Therefore it is clear that the down conversion effect and efficiency improvement could be dramatically higher and in particular efficiency improvements could be achieved even at 1-sun, without concentration.Since down conversion can be in principle tuned by Si-ncs size and the concentration, another advantage of embedding Si-ncs/PEDOT:PSS nanocomposites could be the integration with tandem solar cells whereby easier matching of photocurrents of top with bottom cell can be more easily achieved [34].…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A silicon nanocrystal/polymer nanocomposite as a down-conversion layer in organic and hybrid solar cells

et al. 2015

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Silicon nanocrystal (Si-nc) down-conversion is demonstrated to enhance organic and hybrid organic/inorganic bulk heterojunction solar cells based on PTB7:[70]PCBM bulk heterojunction devices. Surfactant free surface-engineered Si-ncs can be integrated into the device architecture to be optically active and provide a means of effective down-conversion of blue photons (high energy photons below ∼450 nm) into red photons (above ∼680 nm) leading to 24% enhancement of the photocurrent under concentrated sunlight. We also demonstrate that the down-conversion effect under 1-sun is enhanced in the case of hybrid solar cells where engineered Si-ncs are also included in the active layer.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A silicon nanocrystal/polymer nanocomposite as a down-conversion layer in organic and hybrid solar cells

et al. 2015

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“…Real ARCs are not spectrally flat, although a combination of surface texturing and interference films (e.g., SiN x /SiO 2 ) can provide very low reflection for most wavelengths longer than 450 nm. 30 …”

Section: A Modelling a Realistic C-si Solar Cell: Non-ideal Design Amentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addition to preventing reflections from the front surface, such features as surface texturing 30,31 and plasmonic structures 32-34 aid in the "trapping" of light into the material by adiabatically scattering the incident radiation into modes that deviate considerably from those normal to the wafer plane, where they are confined by total internal reflection. As a result, the effective path length of rays of light is increased up to a theoretical limit of 4n 2 d for Lambertian (random) scattering in planar geometry, where n is the refractive index of the solar cell material and d is the material thickness.…”

Section: Light Trappingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Limiting efficiency of generalized realistic c-Si solar cells coupled to ideal up-converters

Johnson

Conibeer

2012

Journal of Applied Physics

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Articles you may be interested inEfficiency enhancement calculations of state-of-the-art solar cells by luminescent layers with spectral shifting, quantum cutting, and quantum tripling function Resonances and absorption enhancement in thin film silicon solar cells with periodic interface textureThe detailed balance model of photovoltaic up-conversion is revised for the specific case of a c-Si solar cell under the AM1.5G solar spectrum. The limiting efficiency of an ideal solar cell with a band gap of 1.117 eV may be increased from approximately 33% to 40% with ideal up-conversion. However, real solar cells do not demonstrate the step-function absorption characteristic assumed in the standard detailed balance model. Here, we use tabulated Si refractive index data to develop a generalized model of a realistic conventional c-Si solar cell. The model incorporates optical design and material parameters such as free carrier absorption that have a non-trivial impact on the operation of the up-conversion layer. While these modifications are shown to decrease the absolute limiting efficiency, the benefit of up-conversion is shown to be relatively greater. V C 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.

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“…Si top cells combined with low-bandgap Ge bottom cells have been predicted to yield absolute efficiency gains of 2.9% for 1-sun concentration, and 5.8% for 50 suns, compared with an optimized Si cell [5]. Si cells have also been proposed as one of six cells in high-efficiency tandem modules capable of efficiencies above 50% [6].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tandem Solar Cells Based on High-Efficiency c-Si Bottom Cells: Top Cell Requirements for >30% Efficiency

White

Lal

Catchpole

2014

IEEE J. Photovoltaics

172

110

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Tandem solar cells based on crystalline silicon present a practical route toward low-cost cells with efficiencies above 30%. Here, we evaluate a dual-junction tandem configuration consisting of a high-efficiency c-Si bottom cell and a thin-film top cell based on low-cost materials. We show that the minimum top cell efficiency required to reach 30% tandem efficiency ranges from 22% for a bandgap of 1.5 eV to 14% for a bandgap of 2 eV. We investigate these limits using a simple model for a four-terminal tandem to identify the material requirements for the top cell in terms of optical absorption, electronic bandgap, carrier transport, and luminescence efficiency. In particular, we show that even relatively low-quality earth-abundant semiconductor materials with luminescence efficiencies of 10 −5 and diffusion lengths below 100 nm are compatible with tandem cell efficiencies above 30%. Introducing light trapping in the top cell can increase the efficiency beyond 32% and reduce the required diffusion length below 50 nm. This analysis establishes clear research targets for high-bandgap semiconductor materials and novel thin-film solar cell concepts that can be combined with existing c-Si technology. Such tandem approaches could enable the rapid development of a new generation of low-cost high-efficiency cells.

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Design, fabrication, and analysis of transparent silicon solar cells for multi‐junction assemblies

Cited by 7 publications

References 26 publications

A silicon nanocrystal/polymer nanocomposite as a down-conversion layer in organic and hybrid solar cells

A silicon nanocrystal/polymer nanocomposite as a down-conversion layer in organic and hybrid solar cells

Limiting efficiency of generalized realistic c-Si solar cells coupled to ideal up-converters

Tandem Solar Cells Based on High-Efficiency c-Si Bottom Cells: Top Cell Requirements for >30% Efficiency

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