Nanophotonics for the terawatt solar age: New concepts for generation of electricity and fuels from sunlight
- Creators
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Atwater, Harry
Abstract
The recent rapid drop of solar module prices and global growth of photovoltaics has moved frontiers for solar energy research towards new challenges and opportunities, including new nanophotonics-based tandem photovoltaic structures that have potential to leverage the enormous existing manufg. base for Si photovoltaics. I will describe new approaches for nanophotonic design of high efficiency photovoltaics and photoelectrochem. generation of solar fuels. First, I describe a tandem-on-Si luminescent solar concentrator concept that uses quantum dot luminophores and nanoantennas to enable 30-100x concn. of diffuse sunlight onto small III-V compd. semiconductor cells, with potential for beyond-Si module efficiencies. Another direction towards achieving cost-effective III-V tandem-on-Si structures employs nanowire top cells prepd. via epitaxy-free and vacuumfree processing methods. Finally, emerging two-dimensional semiconductor materials such as transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) and layered perovskites with high luminescence yields and favorable bandgaps are interesting candidates for tandem photovoltaics. I will also discuss approaches to use of tandem nanophotonic structures for photoelectrodes and light management in high efficiency, stable photoelectrochem. devices for water-splitting and carbon dioxide redn.
Additional Information
© 2018 American Chemical Society.Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 85771
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20180412-073517466
- Created
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2018-04-12Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2019-10-03Created from EPrint's last_modified field