Modeling of nanoscale solar cells: The Green's function formalism

Solar cells incorporating nano-structures represent a promising solution to overtake the Schockley-Queisser limit. On the other hand, the non-equilibrium Green's function formalism provides a sound conceptual basis for the development of quantum simulators that are needed for nanoscale devices. While this approach has already been applied to solar cells, it remains unfamiliar to most photovoltaic physicists. In this paper we show the main concepts of this formalism and illustrate it with a simple 1D model of solar cell. This model is applied to a thin film GaAs solar cell. Our investigations permit to show and analyze current flowing in the solar cell at the nanometer scale.

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