A Proposal for Intermediate Band Solar Cells with Optimized Transition Energy in Cr Doped 3C-SiC

Abstract

The Intermediate Band Solar Cell (IBSC) is a new concept proposed to better match the solar spectrum by absorbing sub-bandgap energy photons. One approach to implement this idea is to form an intermediate band (IB) with creating metallic intermediate band inside the host semiconductor. Excellent electronic properties of 3C-SiC such as high electron mobility and saturated electron drift velocity and its suitable band gap makes it an important alternative material for light harvesting technologies instead of conventional semiconductors like silicon. In this paper, the electronic band structure along with density of states calculated by the density functional theory (DFT). Main goal of this paper is proposing a new materials in the field of photovoltaic with intermediate band in the appropriate position. However our theoretical analysis show Cr is appropriate doping for 3C-SiC. In the other hand we demonstrated that our material choice is more advantageous in order to approach to efficiency of near 60 %.