Crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells used for power transmission from solar-pumped lasers: II. Practical implementations

Abstract

We have designed crystalline silicon photovoltaic (PV) cells used for power transmission from solar-pumped lasers (SPLs) emitting at 1064 nm. The practical light-trapping performance of the combination of a multilayered angle-selective filter on the front surface and a diffuse reflector on the rear surface was evaluated by ray-trace simulation, which was taken into account in device simulation. When the SPLs illuminate stationary PV cells or are connected using optical fibers and hence the incident angles to the PV cells are within 10°, a high laser-to-electricity conversion efficiency of around 50% would be feasible under 100 W/cm2 laser illumination using the 50-µm-thick cells. For power transmission to moving objects such as electric vehicles, in which the incident angles change up to 30°, the efficiency of the 75-µm-thick cells is slightly lower because of the less significant light-trapping effect. To realize these high efficiencies, reduction of contact resistance and surface recombination velocity is required.