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Conditions for beneficial coupling of thermoelectric and photovoltaic devices

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Abstract

A possible approach to raise the efficiency of single-junction solar cells is to couple them with thermoelectric generators (TEGs). It was shown that TEG contribution to the output power is basically ruled by the characteristics of the photovoltaic (PV) material. In this study, we present a quantitative model that correlates the efficiency of the hybrid thermoelectric–photovoltaic (HTEPV) device with the energy gap and the working temperature of the solar cell. Two HTEPV structures are discussed, one capable only to recover the heat released by relaxation of hot electron–hole pairs; and a second one also capturing the low–energy part of the solar spectrum. We show that in the second case the increase of the conversion efficiency could justify the effort needed to add a TEG stage to the PV device. HTEPV constructions are also shown to enable the use of wide-gap materials that are not currently considered in PV applications.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This work was supported by FP7-NMP-2013-SMALL-7, SiNERGY (Silicon Friendly Materials and Device Solutions for Microenergy Applications) Project, Contract no. 604169.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials Science, University of Milano-Bicocca, I-20125, Milano, Italy

    Bruno Lorenzi, Maurizio Acciarri & Dario Narducci

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  1. Bruno Lorenzi
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  2. Maurizio Acciarri
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  3. Dario Narducci
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Correspondence to Bruno Lorenzi.

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Lorenzi, B., Acciarri, M. & Narducci, D. Conditions for beneficial coupling of thermoelectric and photovoltaic devices. Journal of Materials Research 30, 2663–2669 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2015.174

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2015.174

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