Device impact of photon recycling and luminescent coupling on InGaP/Si tandems

We numerically evaluate the device impact of photon re-absorption on InGaP/Si tandem solar cells using a coupled optical-electronic device model. The presented simulation results provide guidelines for designing high performance InGaP/Si tandem device. We find that including the effects of photon recycling (PR) and luminescent coupling (LC) results in a 12.5% increase in optimum top-cell thickness for a two-terminal configuration. Furthermore, PR and LC affect the sensitivity of the tandem´s conversion efficiency to various device parameters. As the InGaP bulk lifetime increases, there is an absolute efficiency increase of up to 0.7% for the two-terminal as well as the four-terminal configuration. Considering PR and LC furthermore reduces the power generation sensitivity to shunting in the two-terminal configuration. For the four-terminal configuration, photon re-absorption has a less significant impact.