CAMPVANS · Investigation of carrier multiplication in van der Waals heterostructures for highly efficient solar cells
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2021-03-01 → 2023-02-28
- EU contribution
- €191,149
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Investigation of carrier multiplication in van der Waals heterostructures for highly efficient solar cells
To satisfy the always growing energy demand worldwide, new sources of renewable and green energy are urgently needed. This action responds to this societal challenge by designing and predicting novel photovoltaic (PV) cells based on recently discovered two-dimensional (2-D) crystals with the support of beyond state-of-the-art numerical simulator developed as part of this research effort. van der Waals (vdW) heterostructures (vdWHs) fabricated by stacking different 2-D crystals exhibit optoelectronic properties drastically different from those of the constituent materials. To design efficient PV cells, a deeper understanding of the light-matter interaction in these devices is required. Access to internal physical quantities that cannot be directly measured is of paramount importance to achieve properly working vdWH PV cells. Moreover, experimentally exploring the vast design space is very time consuming and expensive. Advanced physics-based technology computer aided design (TCAD) tools can help address these challenges. By taking advantage of such tools, researchers can explore multiple device configurations in record times and can rapidly provide experimentalists with reliable design guidelines, thus reducing the overall costs. In this action, our goal was to design highly-efficient PV cells based on vdWH of 2-D materials. Our first objective was to develop a beyond state-of-the-art predictive TCAD tool to support the design of vdWH-based devices and assess their performance. The second objective consisted of identifying material combinations covering a large portion of the light spectrum and of increasing the light conversion efficiency by stacking multiple 2-D layers with different band gaps. The third objective was to carefully engineer vdWHs to enhance the inter-layer carrier multiplication process, thereby substantially improving the light conversion efficiency of the vdWH solar cells and exceeding the theoretical limit of conventional solar cells. A parallel goal of the MSCA Individual Fellowship is to foster the development of the individual researcher.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Presently, the two-dimensional (2-D) crystals and their van der Waals heterostructures (vdWHs) are attracting a lot of attention from the scientific community due to the unique features that they offer such as the possibility to widely tune their band gap, study strong light-matter interactions at the ultimate thickness limit. These features are of great relevance for the light harvesting applications as in photodiodes and photovoltaic cells. In this project, we propose to optimise the (opto-)electrical and photovoltaic behaviours of these components. The state-of-the-art ab-initio quantum transport solver relying on the density-functional theory and the Non-Equilibrium Green’s Function formalism will be employed to simulate the I-V characteristics of single- and multiple-junction vdWHs as well as their optoelectronic and photoresponse properties. Electron interactions with phonons and photons will be taken into account to ensure very accurate performance predictions. The validity of our models will be tested by comparing our results for vdWH-based devices with experimental data from our collaborators. These results will advance our understanding of the light-matter interaction in the atomistic scale vdWH junctions. We will then investigate whether the innovative idea of using the inter-layer carrier multiplication will lead to significant improvement of the light conversion efficiency of the photovoltaic cells. Novel vdWH-based superlattice photovoltaic cells will be designed and optimised with the precisely calibrated atomistic simulator. The most promising device configuration will serve as reliable design guidelines for our experimental collaborators so that the designed devices can be manufactured and characterised. This project aims to significantly increase the light conversion efficiency of vdWH-based solar cells by enabling the cascade inter-layer carrier multiplication.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- EIDGENOESSISCHE TECHNISCHE HOCHSCHULE ZUERICH · ZuerichCoordinatorSwitzerland
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union