U. Rau et R. Brendel, THE DETAILED BALANCE PRINCIPLE AND THE RECIPROCITY THEOREM BETWEEN PHOTOCARRIER COLLECTION AND DARK CARRIER DISTRIBUTION IN SOLAR-CELLS, Journal of applied physics, 84(11), 1998, pp. 6412-6418
It is shown that a recently described general relationship between the
local collection efficiency of solar cells and the dark carrier conce
ntration (reciprocity theorem) directly follows from the principle of
detailed balance. We derive the relationship for situations where tran
sport of charge carriers occurs between discrete states as well as for
the situation where electronic transport is described in terms of con
tinuous functions. Combining both situations allows to extend the rang
e of applicability of the reciprocity theorem to all types of solar ce
lls, including, e.g., metal-insulator-semiconductor-type, electrochemi
cal solar cells, as well as the inclusion of the impurity photovoltaic
effect. We generalize the theorem further to situations where the occ
upation probability of electronic states is governed by Fermi-Dirac st
atistics instead of Boltzmann statistics as underlying preceding work.
In such a situation the reciprocity theorem is restricted to small de
partures from equilibrium. (C) 1998 American Institute of Physics. [S0
021-8979(98)07023-6].