Development of four-terminal devices utilising thin-film solar cells

Single junction solar cells suffer from two primary loss mechanisms due to spectral mismatch: thermalisation and non-absorption losses. A photon with energy greater than the bandgap of the solar cell can be absorbed to excite an electron-hole pair and the excess energy received is released as heat constituting thermalisation losses. On the other...

Development of four-terminal mechanically-stacked solar cells utilising hydrogenated amorphous silicon oxide (a-SiO_x:H) and crystalline silicon cells

A tremendous amount of research in improving the efficiency of the single junction crystalline silicon (c-Si) based solar cells has brought its efficiency (26.6%) close to the theoretical maximum achievable conversion<br/>efficiency (29.43%) [1–3]. Thus to further improve the efficiency, new avenues of reducing losses need to be opened up. One...