Improving solar cell efficiencies by down-conversion of high-energy photons

被引:829
作者
Trupke, T [1 ]
Green, MA
Würfel, P
机构
[1] Univ New S Wales, Ctr Generat Photovolta 3, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia
[2] Univ Karlsruhe, Inst Angew Phys, D-76128 Karlsruhe, Germany
关键词
D O I
10.1063/1.1492021
中图分类号
O59 [应用物理学];
学科分类号
摘要
One of the major loss mechanisms leading to low energy conversion efficiencies of solar cells is the thermalization of charge carriers generated by the absorption of high-energy photons. These losses can largely be reduced in a solar cell if more than one electron-hole pair can be generated per incident photon. A method to realize multiple electron-hole pair generation per incident photon is proposed in this article. Incident photons with energies larger than twice the band gap of the solar cell are absorbed by a luminescence converter, which transforms them into two or more lower energy photons. The theoretical efficiency limit of this system for nonconcentrated sunlight is determined as a function of the solar cell's band gap using detailed balance calculations. It is shown that a maximum conversion efficiency of 39.63% can be achieved for a 6000 K blackbody spectrum and for a luminescence converter with one intermediate level. This is a substantial improvement over the limiting efficiency of 30.9%, which a solar cell exposed directly to nonconcentrated radiation may have under the same assumption of radiative recombination only. (C) 2002 American Institute of Physics.
引用
收藏
页码:1668 / 1674
页数:7
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