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Quantitative experimental assessment of hot carrier-enhanced solar cells at room temperature

Nature Energy volume 3, pages 236–242 (2018)Cite this article

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Abstract

In common photovoltaic devices, the part of the incident energy above the absorption threshold quickly ends up as heat, which limits their maximum achievable efficiency to far below the thermodynamic limit for solar energy conversion. Conversely, the conversion of the excess kinetic energy of the photogenerated carriers into additional free energy would be sufficient to approach the thermodynamic limit. This is the principle of hot carrier devices. Unfortunately, such device operation in conditions relevant for utilization has never been evidenced. Here, we show that the quantitative thermodynamic study of the hot carrier population, with luminance measurements, allows us to discuss the hot carrier contribution to the solar cell performance. We demonstrate that the voltage and current can be enhanced in a semiconductor heterostructure due to the presence of the hot carrier population in a single InGaAsP quantum well at room temperature. These experimental results substantiate the potential of increasing photovoltaic performances in the hot carrier regime.

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Fig. 1: Description of the hot carrier heterojunction device.
Fig. 2: Electrical characteristics of the heterojunction device.
Fig. 3: EQE and absorption model.
Fig. 4: Variation of carrier thermodynamic properties with laser intensity.
Fig. 5: Variation of carrier thermodynamic properties with bias voltage.
Fig. 6: Assessment of the hot carriers’ contribution to power generation.

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Acknowledgements

This work was carried out in the framework of a project of the IPVF (Institut Photovoltaïque d’Île-de-France). This project has been supported by the French Government in the framework of the programme of investment for the future (Programme d’Investissement d’Avenir) ANR-IEED-002-0. The authors acknowledge J. Even for the energy band structure simulation, T. Batté and N. Chevalier for technical assistance on sample and device fabrication, and P. Schultz and J. Connolly for carefully reading the manuscript.

Author contributions

J.-F.G. and L.L. planned the study; D.-T.N. acquired the data; D.-T.N., L.L. and F.G. contributed to data treatment; S.B.-R., A.L.-C. and O.D. designed and fabricated the samples; D.-T.N., L.L. and J.-F.G. contributed to data analysis and modelling and wrote the paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut Photovoltaique d’Ile de France (IPVF), Palaiseau, France

    Dac-Trung Nguyen, Laurent Lombez, François Gibelli & Jean-François Guillemoles

  2. CNRS-Institut Photovoltaique d’Ile de France (IPVF), UMR 9006, Palaiseau, France

    Laurent Lombez, François Gibelli & Jean-François Guillemoles

  3. Univ Rennes, INSA Rennes, CNRS, Institut FOTON – UMR 6082, Rennes, France

    Soline Boyer-Richard, Alain Le Corre & Olivier Durand

Authors
  1. Dac-Trung Nguyen
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  2. Laurent Lombez
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Correspondence to Laurent Lombez.

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Supplementary Notes 1–9, Supplementary Figures 1–11, Supplementary Table 1 and Supplementary References.

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Nguyen, DT., Lombez, L., Gibelli, F. et al. Quantitative experimental assessment of hot carrier-enhanced solar cells at room temperature. Nat Energy 3, 236–242 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-018-0106-3

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