ASSESSMENTS ON THE MULTIJUNCTION SOLAR CELLS PHOTOELECTRIC EFFICIENCY RELATED TO THE SEMICONDUCTOR BAND GAP AND OUTDOOR CONDITIONS

Abstract

The solar cell photoelectric efficiency is a concept introduced to assess the energy conversion process of photons into electron-hole pairs. A study on the correlation between photoelectric efficiency and semiconductor materials band gap of multijunction solar cells is presented. This is based on an integrated computer model used to perform the simulations over solar standard spectrum AM1.5G as well as a non-standard case, which includes the cells operating in outdoor conditions. We find that over a diffuse solar flux, the solar cell photoelectric efficiency increases whenever the cells are made from a semiconductor material with band gap higher than that optimized over the AM1.5G spectrum. Consequently, this opens a new possibility to increase the photovoltaic modules efficiency.