Electronic ratchets as necessary stepping stones for new PV concepts

Amaury Delamarre (1) , Daniel Suchet (2) , Nicolas Cavassilas (3) , Zacharie Jehl (1) , Yoshitaka Okada (4) , Masakazu Sugiyama (4) , Jean-Francois Guillemoles (2)

1 UTokyo - The University of Tokyo
2 IPVF - Institut Photovoltaïque d’Ile-de-France (UMR)
3 IM2NP - Institut des Matériaux, de Microélectronique et des Nanosciences de Provence
4 RCAST - Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology [Tokyo]

Although promising, new solar cells concepts such as Intermediate Band Solar Cells have not shown efficiency improvements beyond single junction records so far. A potential path for increasing the performances would be to introduce electronic ratchets, which consists in a slight energy shift within one of the three bands of the system. Considering realistic properties such as sub optimal absorption and non-radiative recombination, we show that intermediate band can result in severe decrease of the performances, while a ratchet state can compensate those non-idealities. This allows us to consider new structures for the practical realization of intermediate band solar cells, such as quantum wells, which have been largely less considered than quantum dots so far.

Domaines: Physique [physics]; Matière Condensée [cond-mat]

Amaury Delamarre, Daniel Suchet, Nicolas Cavassilas, Zacharie Jehl, Yoshitaka Okada, et al.. Electronic ratchets as necessary stepping stones for new PV concepts. 35th EUPVSEC, Sep 2018, Brussels, Belgium. ⟨hal-02383527⟩