Recent Progress in Inorganic Solar Cells Using Quantum Structures

Abstract

Thermalization of photogenerated carriers in bulk materials is the main bottleneck for the conversion efficiency of conventional inorganic solar cells. Furthermore, despite extensive research, the achieved conversion efficiency is nearly saturated during the last decade. Therefore, new device concepts to break through the efficiency barrier are highly requested. Nanotechnologies are the building blocks for next-generation solar cells, because low-dimensional quantum structures can possibly reduce thermalization and extend the light absorption range. Hereafter, recently invented inorganic solar cells using quantum structures will be reviewed.

Annealing Kinetic Model Using Fast and Slow Metastable Defects for Hydrogenated-Amorphous-Silicon-Based Solar Cells

“…The author have developed hydrogenated protocrystalline Si (pc-Si:H) multilayer absorbers [18]. The pc-Si:H material is a highly H 2 -diluted a-Si:H material existing just [19]. The i-pc-Si:H multilayers exhibit a fast light-induced metastability with a low degradation.…”

“…The pc-Si:H multilayer cell exhibits the rapider recovery than the undiluted a-Si:H cell. From the fast metastability and annealing behaviors of pc-Si:H multilayer solar cells, the vertically regular distribution of the isolated nc-Si grains [21] and the improved medium-range-order in the a-Si:H matrix [23] are considered to localize the photocreation near the grain boundary regions [19], and thereby suppress the photocreation of slow metastable defects in the pc-Si:H multilayers. From the visible photoluminescence (PL) peak measured at room temperature, the isolated nc-Si grains tend to act as radiative recombination centers of captured carriers, which may contribute to the good stability [14].…”

Introduction, Past and Present Scenario of Solar Cell Materials

“…In QDSSCs dye is replaced by quantum dot. Quantum dot has tunable band gap properties, absorbs light up to IR region and produce multiple electrons to enhance efficiency of solar [14,[106][107][108][109] cells. In recent years it is reported that quantum dots (QDs) of InAs with 5, 10 and 12 nm size have 1.071, 0.553 and 0.045 eV band gap respectively.…”

Quantum Confinement Modeling and Simulation for Quantum Well Solar Cells

“…From then on, the use of the multi-layered photovoltaic (MLPV) cells became one of the most used approaches for a high efficiency PV cell. Generally, such cells are p-i-n type diodes, with the intrinsic region formed by a multilayered structure [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. Most of these cells have layers of tens or even hundreds of nanometer thickness, so that the quantum effects are reduced; nevertheless they are also called in some texts "quantum well" PV cells (see for instance Ref.…”

“…The MLPV (and the multi-layered quantum well photovoltaic -MLQWPV) cells are 2D. In literature, they are divided in multiple quantum wells (MQW) and superlattice (SL) systems [5,14], the difference being based on the barrier layer thickness [14]. However, this interpretation is not correct.…”