TY - GEN
T1 - Hot carrier solar cells from group III-V quantum well structures
AU - Smyth, Tran
AU - Wadekar, Paritosh
AU - Chang, Ching-Wen
AU - Tu, Li Wei
AU - Feng, Yu
AU - Xia, Hongze
AU - Puthen-Veetil, Binesh
AU - Johnson, Craig
AU - Limpert, Steve
AU - Gupta, Neeti
AU - Liao, Yuanxun
AU - Huang, Shujuan
AU - Shrestha, Santosh
AU - Conibeer, Gavin
PY - 2013
Y1 - 2013
N2 - To circumvent Shockley-Queisser Limit whilst utilizing thin film deposition, we intend construction of a hot carrier solar cell (HCSC). This device would challenge a fundamental assumption of Shockley-Queisser: that all energy of incoming photons in excess of the acceptance threshold of the cell material is lost as heat. If "excess" energy charge carriers are tapped before they thermalize with the matrix, theoretical cell efficiency (66%) under one sun is twice that of a single-junction silicon cell. In this pursuit, two principal tasks await: actual retardation of carrier thermalization by preventing the decay of accompanying optical phonons, and collection of the carriers via devices known as "Energy Selective Contacts" (ESCs), which withdraw only carriers possessing a narrow range of energies to prevent entropic losses. We propose construction of a Hot Carrier Solar Cell utilizing elemental group III Nitrides for ESC and absorber. Indium Nitride, with its large phononic band gap and small electronic band gap, can provide a suitable absorber, whereas alloys of In(x)Ga(1-x)N can form complementary and lattice-matched ESCs.
AB - To circumvent Shockley-Queisser Limit whilst utilizing thin film deposition, we intend construction of a hot carrier solar cell (HCSC). This device would challenge a fundamental assumption of Shockley-Queisser: that all energy of incoming photons in excess of the acceptance threshold of the cell material is lost as heat. If "excess" energy charge carriers are tapped before they thermalize with the matrix, theoretical cell efficiency (66%) under one sun is twice that of a single-junction silicon cell. In this pursuit, two principal tasks await: actual retardation of carrier thermalization by preventing the decay of accompanying optical phonons, and collection of the carriers via devices known as "Energy Selective Contacts" (ESCs), which withdraw only carriers possessing a narrow range of energies to prevent entropic losses. We propose construction of a Hot Carrier Solar Cell utilizing elemental group III Nitrides for ESC and absorber. Indium Nitride, with its large phononic band gap and small electronic band gap, can provide a suitable absorber, whereas alloys of In(x)Ga(1-x)N can form complementary and lattice-matched ESCs.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84896479330&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/PVSC.2013.6744276
DO - 10.1109/PVSC.2013.6744276
M3 - Conference proceeding contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84896479330
SP - 840
EP - 845
BT - 2013 IEEE 39th Photovoltaic Specialists Conference (PVSC)
PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
CY - Piscataway, NJ
T2 - 39th IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference, PVSC 2013
Y2 - 16 June 2013 through 21 June 2013
ER -