Course Description

Third Generation Photovoltaics: Progress with Silicon Tandems and Hot Carrier Cells

by M. Green, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

With the support of Dow Corning, Seneffe, Belgium

Photovoltaics is destined to push to ever increasing performance due to the cost leverage provided by high efficiency. Although a range of “third generation” techniques have been suggested for improving cell efficiency beyond that of a single cell, so far the tandem, stacked- cell approach is the only one to give improved performance in practice.

Silicon wafer-based modules have shown high levels of reliability. However, there are no obvious candidates for high-bandgap compound semiconductors to use with silicon in tandem cells that would not compromise this reliability and stability, to some extent, or depend upon toxic or scarce elements.  My group’s work seeks to engineer wide-bandgap, Si-compatible materials by using quantum-confinement in silicon quantum dots (QDs) dispersed in a matrix of silicon carbide, nitride or oxide.

Hot carrier solar cells offer another promising options for high performance “third generation” photovoltaic devices. For successful operation, these need to be thin, strongly absorbing, radiatively efficient devices in a simple 2-terminal configuration. Nonetheless, they offer potential performance close to the maximum possible for solar conversion, equivalent to a multi-cell stack of six or more tandem cells possibly without some of the limitations, such as spectral sensitivity. However, hot carrier cells offer some quite fundamental challenges in implementation that our team is also addressing.

Martin Green's short biography

Martin Green is currently a Scientia Professor at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, and Executive Research Dirctor of the University's Photovoltaic Centre of Excellence.  His group's contributions to photovoltaics include development of the world's highest efficiency silicon solar cells and commercialization of several different  cell technologies.  He is the author of several well known books on solar cells and numerous papers.  His work has resulted in many major international awards including the 2002 Right Livelihood Award, commonly known as the Alternative Nobel Prize, the 2007 Solarworld Einstein Award and the 2009 ENY Award for Renewable and Non Conventional Energy.

Where?

Auditoire Sud 11, Place Croix du Sud, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve.  Square F8 on the following map http://www.uclouvain.be/cps/ucl/doc/adpi/documents/PLAN_2007recto.pdf

When?

Wednesday November 9th, from 9h30 to 10h30

Registration on Musics website is free but mandatory.  Please register as soon as possible (maximum number of participants : 100)