The Viability of Spectral Splitting for the Reduction of Recombination Losses in Multi-Bandgap Solar Photovoltaic Devices

M.J.M.PATHAK; F. A. RUBINELLI; J.M.PEARCE

Photons, Technical Review of the Canadian Institute for Photonic Innovations

ICIP-CIPI

Lugar: Quebec; Año: 2011 vol. 9 p. 53 - 55

1913-9586

As the search intensifies to produce low-cost high-efficiency solar photovoltaic cells, several device designs have been proposed to split the solar spectrum and focus only photons of a bandgap appropriate for a given absorber layer in a sub-cell or graded bandgap cell. The intention of such designs is to decrease the electrical path length of charge carriers and the concomitant recombination losses observed in conventional tandem multi-bandgap devices. This article explores the viability of such spectral splitting photovoltaic designs by investigating amorphous silicon and microcrystalline silicon tandem and individual cells using numerical simulation with D-AMPS