Related Research Articles
Eli Yablonovitch is an American physicist and engineer who, along with Sajeev John, founded the field of photonic crystals in 1987. He and his team were the first to create a 3-dimensional structure that exhibited a full photonic bandgap, which has been named Yablonovite. In addition to pioneering photonic crystals, he was the first to recognize that a strained quantum-well laser has a significantly reduced threshold current compared to its unstrained counterpart. This is now employed in the majority of semiconductor lasers fabricated throughout the world. His seminal paper reporting inhibited spontaneous emission in photonic crystals is among the most highly cited papers in physics and engineering.
In the 19th century, it was observed that the sunlight striking certain materials generates detectable electric current – the photoelectric effect. This discovery laid the foundation for solar cells. Solar cells have gone on to be used in many applications. They have historically been used in situations where electrical power from the grid was unavailable.
A solar cell or photovoltaic cell is an electronic device that converts the energy of light directly into electricity by means of the photovoltaic effect. It is a form of photoelectric cell, a device whose electrical characteristics vary when it is exposed to light. Individual solar cell devices are often the electrical building blocks of photovoltaic modules, known colloquially as "solar panels". The common single-junction silicon solar cell can produce a maximum open-circuit voltage of approximately 0.5 to 0.6 volts.
Third-generation photovoltaic cells are solar cells that are potentially able to overcome the Shockley–Queisser limit of 31–41% power efficiency for single bandgap solar cells. This includes a range of alternatives to cells made of semiconducting p-n junctions and thin film cells. Common third-generation systems include multi-layer ("tandem") cells made of amorphous silicon or gallium arsenide, while more theoretical developments include frequency conversion,, hot-carrier effects and other multiple-carrier ejection techniques.
The Staebler–Wronski Effect (SWE) refers to light-induced metastable changes in the properties of hydrogenated amorphous silicon.
TEL Solar, formerly Oerlikon Solar, is a manufacturer of production equipment for the manufacturing of thin-film silicon cells, headquartered in Trübbach, Switzerland, near the border to Liechtenstein. The Japanese electronics and semiconductor company Tokyo Electron acquired the company of about 650 employees from OC Oerlikon in November 2012.
Cadmium telluride (CdTe) photovoltaics is a photovoltaic (PV) technology based on the use of cadmium telluride in a thin semiconductor layer designed to absorb and convert sunlight into electricity. Cadmium telluride PV is the only thin film technology with lower costs than conventional solar cells made of crystalline silicon in multi-kilowatt systems.
The portmanteau micromorph is a combination of the words microcrystalline and amorphous. It is used for a type of silicon based multijunction thin-film solar cell.
Thin-film solar cells are made by depositing one or more thin layers of photovoltaic material onto a substrate, such as glass, plastic or metal. Thin-film solar cells are typically a few nanometers (nm) to a few microns (µm) thick–much thinner than the wafers used in conventional crystalline silicon (c-Si) based solar cells, which can be up to 200 µm thick. Thin-film solar cells are commercially used in several technologies, including cadmium telluride (CdTe), copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS), and amorphous thin-film silicon.
Between 1992 and 2023, the worldwide usage of photovoltaics (PV) increased exponentially. During this period, it evolved from a niche market of small-scale applications to a mainstream electricity source. From 2016-2022 it has seen an annual capacity and production growth rate of around 26%- doubling approximately every three years.
Crystalline silicon or (c-Si) Is the crystalline forms of silicon, either polycrystalline silicon, or monocrystalline silicon. Crystalline silicon is the dominant semiconducting material used in photovoltaic technology for the production of solar cells. These cells are assembled into solar panels as part of a photovoltaic system to generate solar power from sunlight.
Christopher R. Wronski was an electrical engineer and Professor Emeritus at Pennsylvania State University, noted for his pioneering research in photovoltaic cells including discovery of amorphous silicon solar cell and the Staebler–Wronski effect.
Larry C. Olsen was a pioneer in the commercialization of betavoltaic technology. While working for the McDonnell Douglas Corporation in the 1970s, Olsen lead the development of the first commercially available betavoltaic nuclear battery. Several hundred of these batteries were fabricated and a large number were used to power implanted heart pacemakers. Olsen has published more than 80 articles in the fields of betavoltaics, photovoltaics, thermoelectric materials, and solid state physics. He has also earned several awards for his research, including the R&D 100 Award, presented each year by R&D Magazine to identify the 100 most significant, newly introduced research and development advances in multiple disciplines.
David L. Staebler is an American electrical engineer.
Antonio Luque López is a Spanish scientist and entrepreneur in the field of photovoltaic solar energy. In 1979 he founded the Institute of Solar Energy of the Technical University of Madrid (IES-UPM) and was its director till his retirement in 2017; he is currently its honorary president as well as professor emeritus in this university. He invented the bifacial solar cell in the late 1970s, today one of the mainstream solar cell technologies, and founded Isofoton in 1981 for its industrial production. He is, arguably, one of the fathers of the science and technology of concentrator photovoltaics and has been active in the research and development of high-efficiency photovoltaic conversion devices, inventing the intermediate band solar cell.
Joseph John Loferski was an American physicist and a professor of engineering at Brown University. The New York Times called him "a pioneer in the development of solar cells". During his long and successful career he focused primarily on photovoltaic cells and their ability to convert the energy in light to electricity. Loferski also wrote and spoke extensively on the physics of semiconductor materials such as silicon, and methods of improving the efficiency of photovoltaic cells. Loferski's work and that of other early researchers proved that semiconductor devices could produce commercially viable, pollution-free electricity.
Amorphous silicon (a-Si) is the non-crystalline form of silicon used for solar cells and thin-film transistors in LCDs.
Pauls Stradiņš Jr. is a physicist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, and a foreign member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences.
Sarah R. Kurtz is an American materials scientist known for her research on solar energy and photovoltaics, including the application of multi-junction solar cells in robotic spacecraft. Formerly a research fellow at the National Center for Photovoltaics and principal scientist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, she is a professor of materials science and engineering at the University of California, Merced.
Heterojunction solar cells (HJT), variously known as Silicon heterojunctions (SHJ) or Heterojunction with Intrinsic Thin Layer (HIT), are a family of photovoltaic cell technologies based on a heterojunction formed between semiconductors with dissimilar band gaps. They are a hybrid technology, combining aspects of conventional crystalline solar cells with thin-film solar cells.
References
- ↑ Carlson, David; Wronski, C.R. (1976). "amorphous silicon solar cell". Applied Physics Letters. 26 (11): 671–673. Bibcode:1976ApPhL..28..671C. doi:10.1063/1.88617.
- ↑ Catalano, A.; D'Aiello, R. V.; Dresner, J.; Faughnan, B.; Firester, A.; Kane, J.; Schade, H.; Smith, Z. E.; Schwartz, G.; Triano, A. (1982). "Attainment of 10% Conversion Efficiency in Amorphous Silicon Solar Cells". Proceedings of the 16th IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference, San Diego, California: 1421.
- ↑ "Obituary".
- ↑ "American Ceramics Society" (PDF).
- ↑ "IEEE Awards".
- ↑ "The Franklin Institute". 15 January 2014.
- ↑ "Karl Boer Award".
- ↑ "David Carlson". ResearchGate.
- ↑ "David Carlson Inventions, Patents and Patent Applications - Justia Patents Search". patents.justia.com.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
