A new approach to ideal AlGaAs MQW solar cells

A theoretical model has been developed which shows that the insertion of mu lti-quantum wells into the depletion region of a p-i(MQW)-n AlxGa1-xAs sola r cell can significantly enhance the conversion efficiencies. Open-circuit voltages, short-circuit current densities, I-V curves and conversion effici encies have been calculated as functions of the well and barrier band gaps, width and depth of the wells, number of wells in the intrinsic region and the recombination rate in the interfaces. Particular emphasis is placed on calculation of absorption of the AlxGa1-xAs quantum wells. These results ar e matched with p-i-n solar calls which are identical in all respects except that they do not have quantum wells, We demonstrated that for determined v alues of the studied parameters the conversion efficiencies of the quantum well solar cell is higher to corresponding cell without quantum wells.