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AssigneeThe United States of America as represented by the Secretary of the Army
InventorsKimberly A. Sablon, Andrei V. Sergeyev, John W. Little
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Embodiments of the invention generally relates to photovoltaic, thermophotovoltaic, and laser power beaming devices which convert solar light, thermal radiation, or laser radiation into electric power. Said devices have a reflective interference “greenhouse” filter placed in front of a semiconductor cell and a reflective mirror on the back of the cell. The front filter is transparent for high energy (short wavelength) photons, but traps low energy (long wavelength) photons emitted by photocarriers accumulated near the semiconductor bandgap. In the optimized PV device, the chemical potential of photoelectrons near semiconductor bandgap exceeds the chemical potential of photoelectrons above the photonic bandgap established by the filter (i.e., the device is in chemical nonequilibrium). The greenhouse filter reduces the emission losses, decreases the semiconductor cell thickness, and provides PV conversion with reduced nonradiative losses. Said device converts radiative energy into electricity in a more efficient way than conventional cells.
A nonequilibrium photovoltaic energy conversion device comprising:
A chemical nonequilibrium photovoltaic energy conversion device characterized by having different chemical potentials for low-energy photocarriers which are near a semiconductor bandgap of the chemical nonequilibrium photovoltaic energy conversion device and for high-energy photocarriers which are above an optical bandgap of the chemical nonequilibrium photovoltaic energy conversion device, wherein a photo-induced chemical potential of the low-energy photocarriers accumulated near the semiconductor bandgap exceeds a chemical potential of the high-energy photocarriers above the optical bandgap, said chemical nonequilibrium photovoltaic energy conversion device comprising;
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.