On the use of graphene to improve the performance of concentrator III‐V multijunction solar cells
Name
2007.06268.pdf
Description
Accepted version
Size
1.68 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
7397c8977037f579223f9494355ed7b0
Author(s)
Barrutia, Laura
Lombardero, Iván
Ochoa, Mario
Gabás, Mercedes
García, Iván
Palacios, Tomás
Johnson, Andrew
Rey‐Stolle, Ignacio
Algora, Carlos
Date Issued
2020
Journal
Progress in Photovoltaics: Research and Applications
Publisher
Wiley
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
© 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Graphene has been intensively studied in photovoltaics focusing on emerging solar cells based on thin films, dye-sensitized solar cells, quantum dots, nanowires, and so forth. However, the typical efficiency of these solar cells incorporating graphene is below 16%. Therefore, the photovoltaic potential of graphene has not yet been shown. In this work, the use of graphene for concentration applications on III-V multijunction solar cells, which indeed are the solar cells with the highest efficiency, is demonstrated. First, a wide optoelectronic characterization of graphene layers is carried out. Then, the graphene layer is incorporated onto triple-junction solar cells, which decreases their series resistance by 35% (relative), leading to an increase in fill factor of 4% (absolute) at concentrations of 1000 suns. Simultaneously, the optical absorption of graphene produces a relative short-circuit current density decrease in the range of 0% to 1.8%. As a result, an absolute efficiency improvement close to 1% at concentrations of 1000 suns was achieved with respect to triple-junction solar cells without graphene. The impact of incorporating one and two graphene monolayers is also evaluated.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1002/PIP.3207
