Exploring the potential of GeTe for the application in Thermophotovoltaic (TPV) cell

Abstract

Germanium telluride (GeTe) having a direct bandgap of 0.6 eV has mainly been used in phase change memory and thermoelectric power generation. In this article, we study the electronic structure of the GeTe by first-principles calculations. The theoretical direct bandgap of GeTe was found to be 0.69 eV which is very close to the experimental value. Then, we demonstrated a single-junction GeTe thermophotovoltaic (TPV) cell based on device transport model with np structure at the black body and cell temperature of 1775 and 300 K, respectively. The device was optimized for the higher performance of the TPV cell. The GeTe TPV cell exhibited an efficiency of 7.9% with JSC = 16.16 A cm−2, VOC = 0.360 V and FF = 75.51%, respectively. These results indicate that GeTe could be a promising material for the fabrication of efficient TPV cell.

Highly Efficient Cadmium telluride Solar Cell with a Thin CuInTe2 Current Booster: Theoretical Insights

“…The short-circuit current density, J SC , relies on the optical bandgap, E g , of the absorbing semiconductor, and can be computed from the following equation [19] J SC ¼ q…”

“…where σ represents the Stefan-Boltzmann constant, u ¼ The open-circuit voltage, V OC , of a device can be found from the following formula [19] V…”

“…The density of states (DOS) in the conduction and valance bands of a semiconductor depend on temperature. [19] The thermal velocities of the carriers are also temperature dependent. The semiconductor bandgap also reduces with the increase in temperature.…”