Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
6535379 | Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells | 2015 | 5 Pages |
Abstract
Several attempts have been carried out to manufacture intermediate band solar cells (IBSC) by means of quantum dot (QD) superlattices. This novel photovoltaic concept allows the collection of a wider range of the sunlight spectrum in order to provide higher cell photocurrent while maintaining the open-circuit voltage (VOC) of the cell. In this work, we analyze InAs/GaAsN QD-IBSCs. In these cells, the dilute nitrogen in the barrier plays an important role for the strain-balance (SB) of the QD layer region that would otherwise create dislocations under the effect of the accumulated strain. The introduction of GaAsN SB layers allows increasing the light absorption in the QD region by multi-stacking more than 100 QD layers. The photo-generated current density (JL) versus VOC was measured under varied concentrated light intensity and temperature. We found that the VOC of the cell at 20Â K is limited by the bandgap of the GaAsN barriers, which has important consequences regarding IBSC bandgap engineering that are also discussed in this work.
Related Topics
Physical Sciences and Engineering
Chemical Engineering
Catalysis
Authors
P.G. Linares, E. López, I. Ramiro, A. Datas, E. AntolÃn, Y. Shoji, T. Sogabe, Y. Okada, A. MartÃ, A. Luque,