Detailed-balance power conversion limits of nanocrystal-quantum-dot solar cells in the presence of carrier multiplication

By V. Klimov. 2006

196 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Semiconductor nanocrystals can respond to absorption of a single photon by producing multiple electron-hole pairs with extremely high efficiencies. This letter analyzes the impact of this carrier-multiplication (CM) phenomenon on power conversion limits of solar cells using detailed-balance considerations that take into account practical values of CM efficiencies measured in experimental studies. For PbSe nanocrystals that exhibit a ca. 3Eg CM threshold (Eg is the energy gap), the calculated maximum detailed-balance efficiency is 36% in the presence of CM versus 31% in the no-CM case. An increase to 42% is possible if the CM threshold is at its theoretical minimum of 2Eg.

Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Materials Chemistry

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ad957a39d6a1f25fa828e1e577bc88caae58e90b

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Biomedical Engineering

1. V. Dyakonov
2. Katsuaki Tanabe
3. Edward H. Sargent
4. Carsten Deibel
5. K. Johnston

In Electrical and Electronic Engineering

1. K. Johnston
2. Edward H. Sargent
3. V. Dyakonov
4. Carsten Deibel
5. Katsuaki Tanabe

In Materials Chemistry

1. K. Johnston
2. Edward H. Sargent
3. V. Dyakonov
4. Katsuaki Tanabe
5. Carsten Deibel

Citations in the corpus

• A Review of Ultrahigh Efficiency III-V Semiconductor Compound Solar Cells: Multijunction Tandem, Lower Dimensional, Photonic Up/Down Conversion and Plasmonic Nanometallic Structures (2009, background): “Detailed balance limit calculations for solar cell efficiency with multiple carrier excitation have been carried out [75–77].”
• Infrared photovoltaics made by solution processing (2009, background): “In view of the Sun's spectral distribution across the visible and infrared, if MEG is to provide enhanced solar power conversion it will require a small-bandgap light-absorbe”
• Schottky-quantum dot photovoltaics for efficient infrared power conversion (2008, background): “The prospective efficiency improvements from multiple-exciton generation has also sparked much excitement for nanocrystal quantum dot photovoltaics [75].”
• Polymer–fullerene bulk heterojunction solar cells (2010, background): “d to the formation of PCBM clusters, in addition increasing the order of the P3HT phase in the respective cells [229]. Indeed, pure PCBM had previously been reported to have a tendency to crystallise [230, 231]. Up to a certain degree, the demixing of donor and acceptor has a positive impact on the ”