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Solar heating of GaAs nanowire solar cells

Shao-Hua Wu and Michelle L. Povinelli

Open Access Open Access

Abstract

We use a coupled thermal-optical approach to model the operating temperature rise in GaAs nanowire solar cells. We find that despite more highly concentrated light absorption and lower thermal conductivity, the overall temperature rise in a nanowire structure is no higher than in a planar structure. Moreover, coating the nanowires with a transparent polymer can increase the radiative cooling power by 2.2 times, lowering the operating temperature by nearly 7 K.

© 2015 Optical Society of America

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Figures (7)
Fig. 1
Fig. 1 Schematic illustrations of the structures of interest. (a) Square array of GaAs nanowires, embedded in optional BCB. The inset is the magnified top view of one unit cell; a is the lattice constant for the nanowire array, and d is the nanowire diameter. Note that the layer thicknesses are not drawn to scale. (b) Planar GaAs structure. (c) Boundary conditions used to solve the 3D heat diffusion equation.

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Fig. 2
Fig. 2 (a) The temperature rise in a nanowire for the structure of Fig. 1(a), for a = 600 nm and d = 300 nm. The solid black line indicates the outline of the GaAs nanowire. (b) The temperature rise in the top 3 μm of the planar structure in Fig. 1(b). The heat input for both (a) and (b) is set to be 900 W/m2. (c) Calculated temperature rise for different structures as functions of heat input, Pin . Black, blue, and red curves represent the results for planar, GaAs nanowires, and BCB-coated GaAs nanowires, respectively.

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Fig. 3
Fig. 3 (a) Emissivity (or absorptivity) spectra of different solar cell designs. Results are for normal incidence, averaged over polarization. For the nanowire structures, a = 600 nm and d = 300 nm. (b) The spectral blackbody radiance at different temperatures.

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Fig. 4
Fig. 4 F.O.M. for BCB-coated NW array as a function of the structural parameters; Ttop = 330 K.

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Fig. 5
Fig. 5 Effect of nanowire thermal conductivity upon the temperature rise in a BCB-coated NW structure at fixed heat input = 900 W/m2. The structural parameters are a = 600 nm and d = 300 nm. The reference bulk thermal conductivity is 54 W/m-K at 300 K.

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Fig. 6
Fig. 6 Effect of convection upon the temperature rise at fixed heat input = 900 W/m2. (a) Temperature rise as a function of h1 for fixed h2 = 6 W/m2K. (b) Temperature rise as a function of h2 for fixed h1 = 12 W/m2K.

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Fig. 7
Fig. 7 (a) Effect of substrate thickness on temperature rise at fixed heat input = 900 W/m2. (b) Emissivity spectra for a 3-μm-tall nanowire with different radii: 150 nm (blue curve), 200 nm (blue dashed curve), and 250 nm (blue dotted curve). In all cases, a = 600nm. The black curve represents emissivity for the 3-μm thick planar GaAs solar cell.

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Equations (7)

Equations on this page are rendered with MathJax. Learn more.

∇ ⋅ [ κ ( x , y , z ; T ) ∇ T ( x , y , z ) ] + Q ( x , y , z ) = 0 ,
− κ ∇ T | t o p = P r a d ( T t o p ) + h 1 ( T t o p − T a m b ) ,
− κ ∇ T | b o t = h 2 ( T b o t − T a m b ) .
P r a d ( T t o p ) = P c e l l ( T t o p ) − P a m b ( T a m b ) .
P c e l l ( T t o p ) = ∫ d Ω cos θ ∫ d λ I B B ( T t o p , λ ) ε ( Ω , λ ) ,
P a m b ( T a m b ) = ∫ d Ω cos θ ∫ d λ I B B ( T a m b , λ ) ε ( Ω , λ ) ε a t m ( θ , λ ) ,
F . O . M . = ∫ 3 μ m 30 μ m I B B ( T t o p , λ ) ε ( λ ) d λ ∫ 3 μ m 30 μ m I B B ( T t o p , λ ) d λ ,
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