Hot carrier solar cell absorbers: materials, mechanisms and nanostructures

The hot carrier cell aims to extract the electrical energy from photo-generated carriers before they thermalize to the band edges. Hence it can potentially achieve a high current and a high voltage and hence very high efficiencies up to 65% under 1 sun and 86% under maximum concentration. To slow the rate of carrier thermalisation is very challenging, but modification of the phonon energies and the use of nanostructures are both promising ways to achieve some of the required slowing of carrier cooling. A number of materials and structures are being investigated with these properties and test structures are being fabricated. Initial measurements indicate slowed carrier cooling in III-Vs with large phonon band gaps and in multiple quantum wells. It is expected that soon proof of concept of hot carrier devices will pave the way for their development to fully functioning high efficiency solar cells.

[1]  P. G. Klemens,et al.  Anharmonic Decay of Optical Phonons , 1966 .

[2]  H. Bilz,et al.  Phonon Dispersion Relations in Insulators , 1979 .

[3]  Klein,et al.  Folded acoustic and quantized optic phonons in (GaAl)As superlattices. , 1985, Physical review. B, Condensed matter.

[4]  K. J. Graves,et al.  McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science & Technology , 1987 .

[5]  Levi,et al.  Hot-carrier cooling in GaAs: Quantum wells versus bulk. , 1993, Physical review. B, Condensed matter.

[6]  P. Würfel,et al.  Solar energy conversion with hot electrons from impact ionisation , 1997 .

[7]  J. Zhu,et al.  Structure and Properties of Germanium Carbide Films Prepared by RF Reactive Sputtering in Ar/CH4 , 1997 .

[8]  Jianfeng Yuan,et al.  Effect of Utilizing Hydrogen-Treated Tantalum Anodized Oxidation on Symmetry of Current–Voltage Characteristic of Metal–Insulator–Metal Element , 1997 .

[9]  Oliver Ambacher,et al.  Growth of cubic InN on r-plane sapphire , 2003 .

[10]  W. Schaff,et al.  Time-resolved spectroscopy of recombination and relaxation dynamics in InN , 2003 .

[11]  G. P. Srivastava,et al.  Long-wavelength nonequilibrium optical phonon dynamics in cubic and hexagonal semiconductors , 2004 .

[12]  S. Erwin,et al.  Tailoring ferromagnetic chalcopyrites , 2004, Nature materials.

[13]  Kwiseon Kim,et al.  Structure and phonons ofZnGeN2 , 2005 .

[14]  A. K. Pal,et al.  Synthesis of B-Sb by rapid thermal annealing of B/Sb multilayer films , 2006 .

[15]  Arun Kumar Pal,et al.  BSb films: Synthesis and characterization , 2007 .

[16]  Gavin Conibeer,et al.  Slowing of carrier cooling in hot carrier solar cells , 2008 .

[17]  Gavin Conibeer,et al.  Hot Carrier Solar Cell Absorbers , 2008 .

[18]  Walter R. L. Lambrecht,et al.  First-Principles Calculations of Elasticity, Polarization-Related Properties, and Nonlinear Optical Coefficients in Zn-IV-N2 Compounds , 2009 .

[19]  Umesh V. Waghmare,et al.  Electronic structure, phonons, and thermal properties of ScN, ZrN, and HfN: A first-principles study , 2010 .

[20]  Gavin Conibeer,et al.  Hot carrier solar cells: Principles, materials and design , 2010 .

[21]  Teodor K. Todorov,et al.  Photovoltaic Devices: High‐Efficiency Solar Cell with Earth‐Abundant Liquid‐Processed Absorber (Adv. Mater. 20/2010) , 2010 .

[22]  Jean-François Guillemoles,et al.  Hot carrier solar cells: Achievable efficiency accounting for heat losses in the absorber and through contacts , 2010 .

[23]  Gavin Conibeer,et al.  Phonon lifetimes in model quantum dot superlattice systems with applications to the hot carrier solar cell , 2010 .

[24]  Umesh V. Waghmare,et al.  Electronic structure, vibrational spectrum, and thermal properties of yttrium nitride: A first-principles study , 2011 .

[25]  L. Lombez,et al.  Hot carrier solar cells: The device that did not exist (but should) , 2011, 2011 Numerical Simulation of Optoelectronic Devices.

[26]  E. Tea,et al.  Hot carriers relaxation in highly excited polar semiconductors: Hot phonons versus phonon-plasmon coupling , 2011 .

[27]  M. Green,et al.  Interplay between the hot phonon effect and intervalley scattering on the cooling rate of hot carriers in GaAs and InP , 2012 .

[28]  L. Lombez,et al.  Thermalisation rate study of GaSb-based heterostructures by continuous wave photoluminescence and their potential as hot carrier solar cell absorbers , 2012 .

[29]  M. Green,et al.  Application of Ge quantum wells fabricated by laser annealing as energy selective contacts for hot-carrier solar cells , 2012, PVSC 2012.

[30]  J. Guillemoles,et al.  Advanced Modeling of Hot Carrier Effects in 3rd Generation Solar Cells , 2012 .

[31]  Masakazu Sugiyama,et al.  InGaAs/GaAsP quantum wells for hot carrier solar cells , 2012, OPTO.

[32]  Martin A. Green,et al.  Investigation of boron antimonide as hot carrier absorber material , 2013 .

[33]  Gavin Conibeer,et al.  Crystallographic Analysis of GexC1-X Film Deposited by RF Magnetron Sputtering for the Hot Carrier Solar Cells , 2013 .

[34]  Gavin Conibeer,et al.  Investigation of carrier-carrier scattering effect on the performance of hot carrier solar cells with relaxation time approximation , 2013 .

[35]  Robert J. Walters,et al.  Experimental demonstration of hot-carrier photo-current in an InGaAs quantum well solar cell , 2014 .