Title :
Hot-carrier effects in type II heterostructures
Author :
Louise C. Hirst;Michael K. Yakes;Chaffra A. Affouda;Christopher G. Bailey;Joseph G. Tischler;Hamidreza Esmaielpour;Vincent R. Whiteside;Ian R. Sellers;Matthew P. Lumb;David V. Forbes;Robert J. Walters
Author_Institution :
U. S. Naval Research Laboratory, 4555 Overlook Ave. SW., Washington DC, 20375, USA
fDate :
6/1/2015 12:00:00 AM
Abstract :
Hot-carrier solar cells have high theoretical limiting efficiency however, absorber materials with slow carrier thermalization remain a development barrier for these devices. In previous studies, charge separation in core-shell colloidal quantum dots has been shown to result in slow carrier relaxation. Charge separation also occurs in III-V heterostructures with type-II band alignments. We characterize hot-carrier effects in InAlAs/InP and InAlAs/InGaAsP quantum well structures, with type-II and quasi-type-II band alignments respectively. InGaAsP is identified as a promising hot-carrier absorber candidate, with thermalization coefficient 1.77±0.12 W.K-1.cm-2, corresponding to limiting solar conversion efficiency >42%, under 2000X.
Keywords :
"Indium phosphide","III-V semiconductor materials","Limiting","Heat pumps","Solar heating","Nanostructured materials","Resonant tunneling devices"
Conference_Titel :
Photovoltaic Specialist Conference (PVSC), 2015 IEEE 42nd
DOI :
10.1109/PVSC.2015.7356231
