Photon converters for Si solar cells

To assess the potential of photon converters to increase the efficiency of state-of-the-art silicon solar cells, a number of cases is analyzed through modeling. The AM1.5G spectrum is modified, according to the change in energy and number of photons produced in the converter, and applied to a PC1D model of a cell structure. For a good bifacial device, it is shown that efficiency gains in the range of 18% (relative) can be achieved with photon down-converters, while the efficiency increases more than 17% with an optimized up-converter. By combining optima down-converter al the front and up-converter at the rear, the gain in efficiency for the bifacial cell exceeds 30%.