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Descripción
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| The constituent work of this Thesis is framed in the research on intermediate band solar cells (IBSCs). This concept offers the possibility of fabricating devices with high photovoltaic-conversion efficiency. Up to now, the fundamentals of operation of IBSCs have been demonstrated experimentally; however, this has only been possible at low temperatures. The intermediate band (IB) concept demands thermal decoupling between the IB and the valence and conduction bands. Stateof- the-art IB materials exhibit a too strong thermal coupling between the IB and one of the other two bands, which prevents the proper operation of IBSCs at room temperature. In the particular case of InAs/GaAs quantum-dot (QD) IBSCs ? as of today, the most widely studied IBSC technology ?, there exists fast thermal carrier exchange between the IB and the conduction band (CB), for two reasons: (1) a narrow (< 0:2 eV) energy gap between the IB and the CB, EL, and (2) the existence of multiple electronic levels between those two bands. Reason (1) also implies that the maximum achievable efficiency is below the theoretical limit for the ideal IBSC, in which EL = 0:71 eV. | |
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Internacional
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Si |
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ISBN
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Tipo de Tesis
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Doctoral |
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Calificación
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Sobresaliente cum laude |
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Fecha
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08/05/2015 |