Topic: Materials, nanocharacterization and
Topic: Materials, nanocharacterization and –structuring
Pulsed laser deposition of intermediate band solar cells
Mohammadreza Nematollahi, Xiaodong Yang, Ursula Gibson, Turid Worren Reenaas
Department of Physics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 7491 Trondheim, Norway
A semiconductor material with an intermediate energy band in the forbidden band gap can absorb photons with smaller energy than the band gap. This is illustrated in Figure 1.
Figure 1 Operation of an intermediate band solar [1]
A solar cell made of such a material can potentially generate a larger photo-current while maintaining the voltage, if the solar cell current is extracted form the conduction and valence bands only. Thus the efficiency increases, and for a single intermediate band the efficiency is 50% larger than for a conventional solar cell. Such solar cells with an intermediate energy band are called intermediate band solar cells (IBSC). The goal of this PhD work is to make an IBSC based on Cr doped ZnS. The material will be fabricated mainly by pulsed laser deposition (PLD). The films will be optimized to obtain a solar cell with higher efficiency than a reference cell without an intermediate band (IB). The structure of the complete solar cell is shown schematically in Figure 2.
Figure 2 The structure of the complete solar cell
Reference:
[1] Luque A., Marti A., Adv. Mater. 22 (2010) 160-174 (review)
