Si:O Alloys for Photovoltaics: Optical and Electrical Properties from Quantum Dots to Thin Films

In current Si based PV devices the sun-light-electricity conversion rarely exceeds the 20% in efficiency, stimulating significant efforts towards new solutions and technologies for giving a boost to Si for PV. One of the most promising routes for the 21st century is exploiting the quantum confinement effect in reduced dimensionality systems, with the aim to harvest the full solar spectrum. Recently, it has been proposed that a certain modulation of the optical bandgap (EG OPT) can be attained by changing the size of Si quantum dots (QDs), which should allow for a large absorption of the solar photon flux [1]. By this way, an “all-Si” tandem solar cell could be fabricated, by stacking solar cells with Si QDs of increasing bandgap (with decreasing QD size) upon a bulk Si cell, to absorb sunlight in a more efficient way.