The III–V Triple-Junction Solar Cell Characteristics and Optimization with a Fresnel Lens Concentrator

Abstract

At present, the Fresnel lens are commonly used as the condenser in high-concentrating photovoltaic (HCPV) modules. It is ideally believed that the output power of a III-V triple-junction solar cell which is placed on the focal plane of a Fresnel lens is the largest, because the intensity of the sunlight on the focal plane is the largest. Actually, according to our work, the dispersion of sunlight through a Fresnel lens and the nonparallelism and divergence of the incident light will lead to changes in the spectrum and the homogeneity of illumination, and cause a drop of the solar cell output. In this paper, the influence of the dispersion and nonparallel incidence of the light on the output of a triple-junction solar cell at different positions near the focal plane were theoretically studied, combined with the light-tracing simulation method and triple-junction solar cell circuit network model. The results show that the III-V triple-junction solar cell has the highest output power in both sides of the focal plane positions. The output power can be increased by about 15% after being optimized. The simulation results were verified by the experiments.

A comprehensive simulation study of multi-junction solar cell

“…Through selective absorption of different regions of the solar spectrum, MJ solar cells achieve effective enhancement in conversion efficiency [1,5,6]. Currently, III-V compound materials are considered ideal for MJ solar cells [7,8]. Relevant literature has demonstrated that MJ solar cells fabricated from III-V compound materials have achieved a conversion efficiency of up to 46% under high solar concentration [9,10].…”

Triple junction solar cell with Cu In1-x Gex Se as absorbents layers

“…There has been a surge in the development, manufacturing, and use of multi-junction solar cells all throughout. But, there were obstacles such as composition, overall size, and lattice matching of different junctions which have now almost been overcome by the use of transparent and conductive buffer layers or tunnel junctions [2][3][4][5][6]. Usually, an III-V multi-junction solar cell has been used as GaAs, InGaAs; InGaP....The 3J solar cells are used due to the ease of growth.…”

“…A number of Multi-junction thin film, and Si structures have been proposed. There are 5junction cells such as AlGaInP/ AlGaInAs/GaInAs/GaInNAs/Ge solar cells which result in a decent efficiency but are difficult to fabricate due to lattice mismatching and therefore need more tunnel junctions and buffer layers that lead to a higher number of trap levels and growth defects which lead to higher unwanted recombination [2,[7][8][9][10][11]. The non-radiative recombination causes the lattice to heat up which is unwanted.…”

Simulation and performance optimization of GaAs/GaSb tandem solar cell

“…Each sub-cell is designed to respond in a specific part of the solar spectrum. This concept was found to be the only one that was successfully commercialized among the other ways of high efficiency designs [5][6].…”