Harvesting photon energy : ultra-thin crystalline silicon solar cell & near-field thermoradiative cells

Abstract

Photons from the sun and terrestrial sources have great potential to satisfy the energy demand of humans. This thesis studies two types of energy conversion technologies, photovoltaic solar cells based on crystalline silicon thin films and thermal-radiative cells using terrestrial heat sources, focusing on managing photons but also concurrently considering electron transport and entropy generation. Photovoltaic technology has been widely adopted to convert solar energy into electricity. Crystalline silicon material occupies ~90% of the photovoltaic market. However, the silicon material in a photovoltaic module with ~180-pm-thick silicon material contributes more than 30% of the overall cost, giving rise to an obstacle to compete with fossil fuel energy. One promising solution to break this barrier is the technology of thin-film crystalline silicon solar cells if the weak absorption of silicon can be overcome. To maintain its high energy conversion efficiency, nanostructure is designed considering both light trapping and electron collection. This design guided the fabrication of 10-pm-thick crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells with efficiencies as high as 15.7%. To reach efficiency >20% in industry, multiple strategies have been investigated to further improve the performance including the least-common-multiple rule for the double gratings structure, external optical cavity, high quality silicon in bulk material and interfaces, and optimal contact spacing and doping. For the energy conversion of terrestrial heat source, a direct bandgap solar cell can work in the reverse bias mode to convert energy into electricity companied by emission of photons as entropy carriers. Photon spectral entropy and fluxes are used to develop strategies for improving the heat to electricity conversion efficiency. Near-field radiative transfer, especially using phonon polariton material to couple out emitted photons from electron-hole recombination, is proposed to enhance energy conversion efficiency as well as the power density. We predict that the InSb thermoradiative cell can achieve the efficiency and power density up to 20.4 % and 327 Wm-2, respectively, between a hot source at 500K and a cold sink at 300K, if the sub-bandgap and non-radiative losses could be avoided.