Challenges with balancing excitations in intermediate-band solar cells

New insight into the potential of practical solar cells can be given through alternative modeling approaches like Monte Carlo simulations. In the present work, the performance of intermediate band solar cells was examined by this method. It is demonstrated that the balance of excitations from the valence band to the intermediate band and from the intermediate band to the conduction band is of great importance for the performance of such cells. Several cases with different distributions of photons given by ASTM standards have been employed in order to detect spectrum sensitivity. Incident photons are accounted for as they interact with the electrons in the valence band or in the intermediate band.