Photocurrent collection mechanism and role of carrier distribution in p-i-n quantum well solar cells
- Resource Type
- Conference
- Authors
- Toprasertpong, Kasidit; Inoue, Tomoyuki; Delamarre, Amaury; Watanabe, Kentaroh; Sugiyama, Masakazu; Nakano, Yoshiaki
- Source
- 2016 IEEE 43rd Photovoltaic Specialists Conference (PVSC) Photovoltaic Specialists Conference (PVSC), 2016 IEEE 43rd. :0163-0168 Jun, 2016
- Subject
- Aerospace
Components, Circuits, Devices and Systems
Engineered Materials, Dielectrics and Plasmas
Engineering Profession
Fields, Waves and Electromagnetics
Photonics and Electrooptics
Power, Energy and Industry Applications
Quantum well devices
Spontaneous emission
Probes
Lighting
Pins
Photoconductivity
Photovoltaic cells
carrier distribution
charge carrier collection
majority carriers
quantum well solar cells
recombination
time-of-flight
- Language
We investigate the role of carrier distribution inside the i-region in the photocurrent collection mechanism of p-i-n quantum well solar cells. The device simulation indicates that the increment of Shockley-Read-Hall recombination after illumination strongly depends on the type of photocarriers and i-region majority carriers. As a result, a solar cell with n-type background doping results in efficient collection of photogenerated electrons from quantum wells even at low field, and this has been confirmed with the results of time-of-flight measurement. Based on this finding, we demonstrate a model for estimating carrier collection efficiency which includes the effect of carrier distribution.