Raising the one-sun conversion efficiency of III–V/Si solar cells to 32.8% for two junctions and 35.9% for three junctions

Stephanie Essig (), Christophe Allebé, Timothy Remo, John F. Geisz, Myles A. Steiner, Kelsey Horowitz, Loris Barraud, J. Scott Ward, Manuel Schnabel, Antoine Descoeudres, David L. Young, Michael Woodhouse, Matthieu Despeisse, Christophe Ballif and Adele Tamboli
Additional contact information
Stephanie Essig: École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Institute of Microengineering (IMT), Photovoltaics and Thin Film Electronic Laboratory (PV-Lab)
Christophe Allebé: CSEM PV-center
Timothy Remo: National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)
John F. Geisz: National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)
Myles A. Steiner: National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)
Kelsey Horowitz: National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)
Loris Barraud: CSEM PV-center
J. Scott Ward: National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)
Manuel Schnabel: National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)
Antoine Descoeudres: CSEM PV-center
David L. Young: National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)
Michael Woodhouse: National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)
Matthieu Despeisse: CSEM PV-center
Christophe Ballif: École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Institute of Microengineering (IMT), Photovoltaics and Thin Film Electronic Laboratory (PV-Lab)
Adele Tamboli: National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)

Nature Energy, 2017, vol. 2, issue 9, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract Today’s dominant photovoltaic technologies rely on single-junction devices, which are approaching their practical efficiency limit of 25–27%. Therefore, researchers are increasingly turning to multi-junction devices, which consist of two or more stacked subcells, each absorbing a different part of the solar spectrum. Here, we show that dual-junction III–V//Sidevices with mechanically stacked, independently operated III–V and Si cells reach cumulative one-sun efficiencies up to 32.8%. Efficiencies up to 35.9% were achieved when combining a GaInP/GaAs dual-junction cell with a Si single-junction cell. These efficiencies exceed both the theoretical 29.4% efficiency limit of conventional Si technology and the efficiency of the record III–V dual-junction device (32.6%), highlighting the potential of Si-based multi-junction solar cells. However, techno-economic analysis reveals an order-of-magnitude disparity between the costs for III–V//Si tandem cells and conventional Si solar cells, which can be reduced if research advances in low-cost III–V growth techniques and new substrate materials are successful.

Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nenergy2017144 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natene:v:2:y:2017:i:9:d:10.1038_nenergy.2017.144

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/nenergy/

DOI: 10.1038/nenergy.2017.144

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Energy is currently edited by Fouad Khan

More articles in Nature Energy from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().