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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Analytic JV-Characteristics of Ideal Impurity PV-Cells

Rune Strandberg

subject

Materials scienceImpurityBand gapAbsorption bandPhotovoltaic systemRadiative transferSensitivity (control systems)Molar absorptivityAbsorption (electromagnetic radiation)Computational physics

description

In this article the mathematical modeling of idealized impurity photovoltaic cells is greatly simplified through the derivation of analytic JV-characteristics. The resulting expressions are also facilitating the intuitive understanding of such photovoltaic devices. The new model is used to investigate the sensitivity of impurity photovoltaic cells to the absorption band width, the impurity related absorptivity and the external radiative efficiency. It is found that impurities with narrow absorption bands or low absorptivity can greatly reduce the efficiency of the device, even if they are fully radiative and have energy levels situated at optimal positions in the band gap. It is also found that increasing the number of impurity species improves the efficiency of devices with low impurity absorptivity or narrow absorption bands. A clear shortcoming of the model is its inability to handle overlapping absorption coefficients.

https://doi.org/10.1109/pvsc.2017.8366595