ACTIVE SOLAR CELL AND METHOD OF MANUFACTURE

摘要

Methods for improving the efficiency of solar cells, and a solar cell thereof. One aspect involves a solar cell with a semiconductor layer (11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17) with a natural band gap NB (NB2, NB3, NB4, NB5, NB6, NB7). This semiconductor layer also has at least one electrode (100, 101, 110, 111, 120, 121) designed to produce an ambient voltage V (V1, V2, V3, V4, V5, V6, V7) into the layer. The incoming photons therefore experience a modified NB−V=B band gap (B1, B2, B3, B4, B5, B6, B7), referred here to as the apparent band gap. Photons with E>B1 will be absorbed into the band gap B, and the electron in the semiconductor valence band will get excited onto the conduction band thus resulting in photocurrent. The ability to tune the apparent band gap B provides an enormous strength to optimize the incoming photon collection.

主权项

1. A method for operating a solar cell, comprising at least two semiconductor layers, comprising:
raw solar spectrum hitting first semiconductor layer with band gap NB1 (600); passing photons with energy ENB1 and converting to photocurrent, secondary photons left with E−NB1 remain from the absorbed photons (630); photons with energy E