Recombination of carriers in quantum well solar cells

Author

Corkish, Richard ; Green, Martin A.

Author_Institution

Centre for Photovoltaic Devices & Syst., New South Wales Univ., Kensington, NSW, Australia

fYear

1993

fDate

10-14 May 1993

Firstpage

675

Lastpage

680

Abstract

The quantum well (QW) solar cell is considered in the radiative limit. A (type I) QW is treated as an incremental cell added to a baseline cell made of the barrier material. By considering the QW to be isolated, in that carrier flow into and out of the QW is prevented, the open circuit voltage of the photon incremental cell is determined as a function of well width. This method indicates that a QW reduces the voltage of the baseline cell but the efficiency may still increase, particularly if the baseline cell´s band gap is greater than or equal to its optimum value for the illuminating spectrum

Keywords

electron-hole recombination; energy gap; minority carriers; semiconductor device models; semiconductor quantum wells; solar cells; band gap; barrier material; baseline cell; carriers recombination; illuminating spectrum; incremental cell; open circuit voltage; photon incremental cell; quantum well solar cells; well width; Absorption; Charge carrier processes; Circuits; Doping; Photonic band gap; Photovoltaic cells; Quantum mechanics; Quantum well devices; Radiative recombination; Voltage;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Photovoltaic Specialists Conference, 1993., Conference Record of the Twenty Third IEEE

Conference_Location

Louisville, KY

Print_ISBN

0-7803-1220-1

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/PVSC.1993.347011

Filename

347011