Abstract
In the 21st century, global energy consumption has increased exponentially and hence, sustainable energy sources are essential to accommodate for this. Advancements within photovoltaics, in regards to light trapping, has demonstrated to be a promising field of dramatically improving the efficiency of solar cells. This improvement is done by using different nanostructures, which enables solar cells to use the light spectrum emitted more efficiently. The purpose of this meta study is to investigate irreversible entropic losses related to light trapping. In this respect, the observation is aimed at how nanostructures on a silicon substrate captures high energy incident photons. Furthermore, different types of nanostructures are then investigated and compared, using the étendue ratio during light trapping. It is predicted that étendue mismatching is a parasitic entropy generation variable, and that the matching has an effect on the open circuit voltage of the solar cell. Although solar cells do have their limiting efficiencies, according to the Shockley-Queisser theory and Yablonovitch limit, with careful engineering and manufacturing practices, these irreversible entropic losses could be minimized. Further research in energy losses, due to entropy generation, may guide nanostructures and photonics in exceeding past these limits.Keywords: Photovoltaic cell; Shockley-Queisser; Solar cell nanostructures; Solar cell intrinsic and extrinsic losses; entropy; étendue; light trapping; Shockley Queisser; Geometry; Meta-study
Highlights
Data was restricted by using keywords 'Photovoltaic cell', 'ShockleyQuesisser', 'Solar cell nanostructures', 'Solar cell intrinsic and extrinsic losses', 'entropy', 'étendue', 'light trapping', 'Shockley Queisser', 'Geometry' peer-reviewed sources from Google Scholar and Science Direct are within the last 40 years for theoretical papers and within the last 10 years for experimental data
It was found that efficiency is greatly influenced by the surface geometry and the area of the nanostructures in the solar cell
Several limitations have been placed on solar cells one of which is the Yablonovitch limit, which interprets the effective path travelled by the photon in a thermodynamic sense
Summary
Black body The purpose of a photovoltaic cell is to produce useable energy, from the solar spectrum of the sun by absorbing emitted radiation [1]. The concept of a black body can be extended and generalized to every materialistic body, which is in thermal equilibrium [2, 5]. This phenomenon was formulated correctly by Planck, where the assumption was that energy was quantized, which he used to fit the emitted spectrum of a blackbody [2, 6]. The differences between the Classical model and the Quantum model are evident
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