2025/07/17 by Bruno Bertin-Johannet, Bertin-Johannet, Bruno, Thibaut Thuégaz +5 · 2 citations
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Chalcogenide Semiconductor Thin Films #FOS: Physical sciences #Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) #Semiconductor materials and interfaces #solar cell performance optimization
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2507.13279
openalex publication_date 2025/07/17 · openalex created_date 2025/10/18 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
Photovoltaic cells usually have two terminals, one collecting electrons and the other collecting holes. Can more terminals improve such solar cells? Energy-filtering terminals could collect "hot" carriers (electrons or holes not yet relaxed to the band edge), with other terminals for low-energy carriers. When collection is faster than carrier-phonon relaxation, we predict that four-terminal cells have higher power output than optimal two-terminal cells, often 20-40% higher. Similar effects will occur in multi-terminal thermoelectrics exploiting non-equilibrium distributions.