Two-photons transition in intermediate band solar cells

Two-photon transition modelling is developed to study quantum mechanism and simulate device operation in intermediate band solar cell (IBSC). The interband-intranband transition, the detailed balance and carrier transport are coupled with each other. IB formation mechanism is studied within one-band envelope-function framework (Kronig-Penney type). Well-designed GaInAs/InP superlattice structures have been proved to separate IB from valence band (VB) and conduction band (CB), which is the precondition of IBSC operations. Further, we calculate two-photon absorption spectra and firstly combine quantum transitions into recent drift-diffusion and detail balanced model. With this model, we have studied a novel IBSC consist of In_0.53Ga_0.47As/InP superlattices (SLs). Our results show the interband-intraband transition determines the conversion efficiency. With well-designed quantum structure, the efficiency in 1.2 μm thick SLs is 46.13% under the maximum concentration. However, as the well or barrier thickness increases to 10 nm, the absorption peak of the intraband transition gradually redshifts and narrows, so the efficiency correspondingly decreases to below 40%.