AbstractsPhysics

Advanced Materials and Nano Technology for Solar Cells

by Tao Han




Institution: University of California – Santa Cruz
Department: Electrical Engineering
Year: 2014
Keywords: Electrical engineering; Materials Science; Physics; Advanced Materials; Nano Technology; Solar Cell
Record ID: 2057464
Full text PDF: http://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/03q3b03k


Abstract

In order to optimize the optical and electronic properties of solar cells and enhance the conversion efficiency, this article mainly investigated the advanced optoelectronic materials which play important role in photovoltaic devices. The physical mechanism and their potential applications are systematically studied. The optical and electronic properties are tuned and optimized by co-doping some elements or adding silver nanoparticles into the semiconductor films. The research methods involve chemical deposition growth of the materials, measurements and analysis of the properties, modeling and simulation based on electrodynamics, quantum mechanics with many body theory, semiconductor physics and optics, and finally the comparison from these different research methods. On one hand, experimentally and theoretically, the semiconductor co-doped with IIA and IIIA elements was found to be widely tunable for its band gap and resistivity, and thus has great potential in the field of photovoltaics and microelectronics. On the other hand, theoretically, it was shown that the optical properties of semiconductors with silver nanoparticles rely on the particle scale and distribution density, providing the theoretical guidance for the Ag nano based multifunctional materials.