Crystalline-Si (c-Si) solar cell with black Si (b-Si) layer at the rear was studied in order to develop c-Si solar cell with sub-band gap photovoltaic response. The b-Si was made by chemical etching. The c-Si solar cell with b-Si at the rear was found to perform far better than that of similar structure but with no b-Si at the rear, with the efficiency being increased relatively by 27.7%. This ...

We report the initial results of GaAs and GaInP solar cells grown by all solid-state molecular-beam-epitaxy (MBE) technique. For GaAs single-junction solar cell, with the application of AlInP as the window layer and GaInP as the back surface field layer, the photovoltaic conversion efficiency of 26% at one sun concentration and air mass 1.5 global (AM1.5G) is realized. The efficiency of 16.4% i...

Traditional inorganic solar cell models, originating with the work of Shockley, are widely used in understanding bulk heterojunction (BHJ) organic solar cell response (organic solar cells are also referred to as organic photovoltaics, or OPVs). While these models can be useful, there are several key points of departure from traditional solar cell behavior. In this Perspective, we discuss three ...

Efficiencies of large area n-type silicon solar cells with a screen printed rear side aluminum-alloyed emitter are mainly limited by their front surface recombination velocity. The front surface therefore has to be passivated by an effective passivation layer combined with a front surface field (FSF). In this work we investigate the influence of the front surface passivation quality and the bas...

Overall performance of a thin film solar cell is determined by the efficiency of converting photons to electrons through light absorption, carrier generation, and carrier collection. Recently, photon management has emerged as a powerful tool to further boost this conversion efficiency. Here we propose a novel nanograting solar cell design that achieves enhanced broadband light absorption and ca...

Dye sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) are considered as one of the most promising alternativerenewable energy sources. In the structure of DSSCs, a photosensitizer composed of transitionmetal complexes is used to harvest light. In this work a binuclear complex containing twopropionitrile pendant arms [ZnLCu(OAC)]PF6 {L = 1, 6- bis (2-cyanoethyl) -2, 5-bis (2-hydroxy3-formyl-5-methylbenzyl)-2, 5- d...