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Requisites for Highly Efficient Hot-Carrier Solar Cells

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Quantum Dot Solar Cells

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Nanoscale Science and Technology ((LNNST,volume 15))

Abstract

We have constructed new models based on detailed balance of particle and energy fluxes to clarify the operating principle of hot-carrier solar cells (HC-SCs) and find the requisites for high conversion efficiency. Energy dissipation due to thermalization of photogenerated carriers can be significantly reduced, even though the thermalization time is not sufficiently long. Instead, the energy dissipation related to entropy generation associated with hot-carrier extraction is remarkable. The thermalization time must be several nanoseconds to exceed the Shockley–Queisser limit under the 1 sun solar irradiation and over 10 ns to compete against triple-junction solar cells at 1,000 sun. The other requisites unique to hot-carrier extraction are a short carrier equilibration time being around one-thousandth of the thermalization time, and an energy-selection width of energy-selective contacts (ESCs) for mono-energetic carrier extraction, which is needed to match the quasi-Fermi levels in the hot absorber and in the cold electrodes, being narrower than 0.1 eV. It seems extremely challenging to fulfill all the requisites, although investigations for material development as well as new concepts for post conventional HC-SCs are underway.

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Acknowledgments

I wish to thank Dr. T. Motohiro, Dr. K. Higuchi, Dr. T. Ito, Dr. T. Ikuno, Dr. S. Ogawa, Dr. K. Yamanaka, K. Nishikawa (Toyota Central R&D Labs., Inc., Japan), T. Nagashima, K. Okumura, D. Sato, J. Ota (Toyota Motor Corp., Japan), Professor G. Conibeer, Dr. D. König, Dr. P. Aliberti (Univ. New South Wales, Australia), Dr. N. J. Ekins-Daukes, Dr. D. J. Farrell (Imperial College London, UK), Professor Y. Okada, Dr. N. Miyashita (Univ. Tokyo, Japan), Dr. S. Yagi (Saitama Univ., Japan), and Dr. R. Oshima (National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Japan) for many valuable discussions.

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  1. Toyota Central Research and Development Laboratories, Inc., 41-1 Yokomichi, Nagakute, Aichi, 480-1192, Japan

    Yasuhiko Takeda

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  1. Yasuhiko Takeda
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  1. State Key Laboratory of Electronic Thin, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China, People's Republic

    Jiang Wu

  2. State Key Laboratory of Electronic, University of Electronic Science and Technology, Chengdu, China, People's Republic

    Zhiming M. Wang

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Takeda, Y. (2014). Requisites for Highly Efficient Hot-Carrier Solar Cells. In: Wu, J., Wang, Z. (eds) Quantum Dot Solar Cells. Lecture Notes in Nanoscale Science and Technology, vol 15. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8148-5_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8148-5_8

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