The fundamental problem of treating light incoherence in photovoltaics and its practical consequences
The incoherence of sunlight has long been suspected to have an impact on solar cell energy conversion efficiency, although the extent of this is unclear. Existing computational methods used to optimize solar cell efficiency under incoherent light are based on multiple time-consuming runs and statist...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
IOP Publishing
2014-01-01
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| Series: | New Journal of Physics |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630/16/1/013022 |
| _version_ | 1827874211968843776 |
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| author | Aline Herman Michaël Sarrazin Olivier Deparis |
| author_facet | Aline Herman Michaël Sarrazin Olivier Deparis |
| author_sort | Aline Herman |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | The incoherence of sunlight has long been suspected to have an impact on solar cell energy conversion efficiency, although the extent of this is unclear. Existing computational methods used to optimize solar cell efficiency under incoherent light are based on multiple time-consuming runs and statistical averaging. These indirect methods show limitations related to the complexity of the solar cell structure. As a consequence, complex corrugated cells, which exploit light trapping for enhancing the efficiency, have not yet been accessible for optimization under incoherent light. To overcome this bottleneck, we developed an original direct method which has the key advantage that the treatment of incoherence can be totally decoupled from the complexity of the cell. As an illustration, surface-corrugated GaAs and c-Si thin-films are considered. The spectrally integrated absorption in these devices is found to depend strongly on the degree of light coherence and, accordingly, the maximum achievable photocurrent can be higher under incoherent light than under coherent light. These results show the importance of taking into account sunlight incoherence in solar cell optimization and point out the ability of our direct method to deal with complex solar cell structures. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-12T16:49:01Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-d62a534f4ed347728704da059115ebba |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1367-2630 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-12T16:49:01Z |
| publishDate | 2014-01-01 |
| publisher | IOP Publishing |
| record_format | Article |
| series | New Journal of Physics |
| spelling | doaj.art-d62a534f4ed347728704da059115ebba2023-08-08T11:27:27ZengIOP PublishingNew Journal of Physics1367-26302014-01-0116101302210.1088/1367-2630/16/1/013022The fundamental problem of treating light incoherence in photovoltaics and its practical consequencesAline Herman0Michaël Sarrazin1Olivier Deparis2Solid-State Physics Laboratory, Research Center in Physics of Matter and Radiation (PMR), University of Namur , 61 rue de Bruxelles, B-5000 Namur, BelgiumSolid-State Physics Laboratory, Research Center in Physics of Matter and Radiation (PMR), University of Namur , 61 rue de Bruxelles, B-5000 Namur, BelgiumSolid-State Physics Laboratory, Research Center in Physics of Matter and Radiation (PMR), University of Namur , 61 rue de Bruxelles, B-5000 Namur, BelgiumThe incoherence of sunlight has long been suspected to have an impact on solar cell energy conversion efficiency, although the extent of this is unclear. Existing computational methods used to optimize solar cell efficiency under incoherent light are based on multiple time-consuming runs and statistical averaging. These indirect methods show limitations related to the complexity of the solar cell structure. As a consequence, complex corrugated cells, which exploit light trapping for enhancing the efficiency, have not yet been accessible for optimization under incoherent light. To overcome this bottleneck, we developed an original direct method which has the key advantage that the treatment of incoherence can be totally decoupled from the complexity of the cell. As an illustration, surface-corrugated GaAs and c-Si thin-films are considered. The spectrally integrated absorption in these devices is found to depend strongly on the degree of light coherence and, accordingly, the maximum achievable photocurrent can be higher under incoherent light than under coherent light. These results show the importance of taking into account sunlight incoherence in solar cell optimization and point out the ability of our direct method to deal with complex solar cell structures.https://doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630/16/1/013022 |
| spellingShingle | Aline Herman Michaël Sarrazin Olivier Deparis The fundamental problem of treating light incoherence in photovoltaics and its practical consequences New Journal of Physics |
| title | The fundamental problem of treating light incoherence in photovoltaics and its practical consequences |
| title_full | The fundamental problem of treating light incoherence in photovoltaics and its practical consequences |
| title_fullStr | The fundamental problem of treating light incoherence in photovoltaics and its practical consequences |
| title_full_unstemmed | The fundamental problem of treating light incoherence in photovoltaics and its practical consequences |
| title_short | The fundamental problem of treating light incoherence in photovoltaics and its practical consequences |
| title_sort | fundamental problem of treating light incoherence in photovoltaics and its practical consequences |
| url | https://doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630/16/1/013022 |
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