Abstract
The energy carried by sunlight has an enormous potential to provide humanity with all the energy it needs while limiting the catastrophic consequences of climate change caused to a large extent by current combustion of fossil fuels. A convenient way to harvest solar energy is by making use of the photovoltaic effect of certain semiconducting materials. When a solar photon interacts with such a material, its energy can be converted into electronic energy, which can be extracted to an external electrical circuit, providing both a photovoltage and a photocurrent. The material absorbing the sunlight imposes certain boundary conditions on its electrons which allow electronic states to have only specific distinct energies. Importantly, there will always be a certain minimum energy needed to promote a “resting” electron in a material to a higher electronic state. Therefore, all materials used for the absorption of sunlight will have a requirement on the minimal energy that must be carried by a photon in order for that photon to be absorbed by the material. Photons with energies lower than this absorption threshold will be transmitted by the material. In a solar cell, this portion of solar energy will be lost. This loss of solar photons, known as a transmission loss, restricts the photocurrent achievable from sunlight (see Fig. 1.1a). In a hypothetical solar cell with an optimal absorption threshold (also known as band gap) of 1.3 eV, the fraction of incident solar energy lost by transmission is ∼25%.
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Lissau, J.S., Madsen, M. (2022). Introduction: Solar Cell Efficiency and Routes Beyond Current Limits. In: Lissau, J.S., Madsen, M. (eds) Emerging Strategies to Reduce Transmission and Thermalization Losses in Solar Cells. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70358-5_1
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