Metal Hydrides as hot carrier cell absorber materials

Pei Wang; Xiaoming Wen; Santosh Shrestha; Gavin Conibeer; Kondo-Francois Aguey-Zinsou

doi:10.1117/12.2242400

23 September 2016 Metal Hydrides as hot carrier cell absorber materials

Pei Wang, Xiaoming Wen, Santosh Shrestha, Gavin Conibeer, Kondo-Francois Aguey-Zinsou

Proceedings Volume 9937, Next Generation Technologies for Solar Energy Conversion VII; 993707 (2016) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2242400
Event: SPIE Optics + Photonics for Sustainable Energy, 2016, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

The hot Carrier Solar Cell (HCSC) allows the photon-induced hot carriers (the carriers with energy larger than the band gap) to be collected before they completely thermalise. The absorber of the HCSC should have a large phononic band gap to supress Klemens Decay, which results in a slow carrier cooling speed. In fact, a large phononic band gap likely exists in a binary compound whose constituent elements have a large mass ratio between each other. Binary hydrides with their overwhelming mass ratio of the constituent elements are important absorber candidates. Study on different types of binary hydrides as potential absorber candidates is presented in this paper. Many binary transition metal hydrides have reported theoretical or experimental phonon dispersion charts which show large phononic band gaps. Among these hydrides, the titanium hydride (TiH_X) is outstanding because of its low cost, easy fabrication process and is relatively inert to air and water. A TiH_X thin film is fabricated by directly hydrogenating an evaporated titanium thin film. Characterisation shows good crystal quality and the hydrogenation process is believed to be successful. Ultrafast transient absorption (TA) spectroscopy is used to study the electron cooling time of TiH_X. The result is very noisy due to the low absorption and transmission of the sample. The evolution of the TA curves has been explained by band to band transition using the calculated band structure of TiH₂. Though not reliable due to the high noise, decay time fitting at 700nm and 600nm shows a considerably slow carrier cooling speed of the sample.

Conference Presentation

Citation Download Citation

Pei Wang, Xiaoming Wen, Santosh Shrestha, Gavin Conibeer, and Kondo-Francois Aguey-Zinsou "Metal Hydrides as hot carrier cell absorber materials", Proc. SPIE 9937, Next Generation Technologies for Solar Energy Conversion VII, 993707 (23 September 2016); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2242400

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