Peter Wiirfel Physics of Solar Cells From Principles to New Concepts WILEY- VCH WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaAAuthor Prof., Dr. rer. nat., emerit. Peter Witrfel Universitit Karlsruhe Institut ffir Angewandte Physik peter. wuerfel@physik.uni-karlsrube.de Cover Picture Jorg Trebs, Berlin All books published by Wiley-VCH are carefully produced. Nevertheless, authors, editors, and publisher do not warrant the information contained in these books, including this book, to be free of errors. Readers are advised to keep in mind that statements, data, illustrations, procedural details or other items may inadvertently be inaccurate. Library of Congress Card No.: applied for British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data: A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Bibliothek Die Deutsche Bibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografic; detailed bibliographic data is available in the Internet at . © 2005 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co, KGaA, Weinheim All rights reserved (including those of translation into ‘other languages). No part of this book may be repro- duced in any form — nor transmitted or translated into ‘machine language without written permission from the publishers. Registered names, trademarks, etc used in this book, even when not specifically marked as such, are not to be considered unprotected by law. Printed in the Federal Republic of Germany Printed on acid-free paper Printing _betz-druck GmbH, Darmstadt Bookbinding Litges & Dopf Buchbinderei GmbH, Heppenheim ISBN 3-527-40428-7Contents List of Symbols ix Preface xi 1 Problems of the Energy Economy ie Enersyecouoniy 1.2 Estimate of the maximum reserves of fossil energy - 1.3. The greenhouse effect... .......005 1.3.1 Combustion . oe 13.2 The temperature of the earth 2 Photons 9 2.1 Black-body radiation 2. ..0 ewe eee eee ee eee 7 2.1.1 Photon density ny in a cavity (Planck’s law of radiation)... . . 7 2.1.2. Energy current through an area dA into the solid angledQ .. . . 14 2.1.3. Radiation from a spherical surface into the solid angle dQ 16 2.1.4 Radiation from a surface element into a hemisphere (Stefan—Boltzmann radiation law) .. 6-2... 7 2.2 Kirchhoff’s law of radiation for non-black bodies... . . 19 2.2.1 Absorption by semiconductors... . . 21 2.3. The solar spectrum . 21 2.3.1 Air Mass 23 2.4 — Concentration of the solar radiation a 24 2.4.1 The Abbé sine condition ........ ee 26 24.2 Geometrical optics .. 0... 2. cc eee eee 26 2.4.3 Concentration of radiation using the sine condition . 28 2.5 Maximum efficiency of solar energy conversion... . . . 29 3 Semiconductors 37 3.1 Electrons in semiconductors... 6... 2... eee eee eee eee eee 38 3.1.1 Distribution function for electrons . . . 38 3.1.2 Density of states De(£¢) for electrons 39 3.1.3 Density of electrons 43 3.2 Holes . 45 55 Done 47 Physies of Solar Cells: From Principles to New Concepts. Peter Wurfel Copyright ©2005 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim ISBN: 3-527-40428-7