报告摘要：

Solar cell science and technology is changing.  New efficiency records have been set.  Alta Devices has reached 28.8% efficiency in a thin film single-junction cell at 1-sun, and 30.8% efficiency in a thin-film dual junction cell at 1-sun. 

 

Counter-intuitively, efficient external fluorescence is a necessity for approaching the ultimate limits.  A great Solar Cell also needs to be a great Light Emitting Diode.  Why would a solar cell, intended to absorb light, benefit from emitting light?  Although it is tempting to equate light emission with loss, paradoxically, light emission actually improves the open-circuit voltage, and the efficiency.

 

The single-crystal thin film technology that achieved these high efficiencies, is created by epitaxial liftoff, and can be produced at cost well below the other less efficient thin film solar technologies.  The path is now open to a 30% efficient photovoltaic technology that can be produced at low cost.

 

主讲人简介：

Eli Yablonovitch is Director of the NSF Center for Energy Efficient Electronics Science (E³S), a multi-University Center based at Berkeley. After a career in industry and in Universities, he is now Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at UC Berkeley, where he holds the James & Katherine Lau Chair in Engineering. He contributed the 4n² light-trapping factor to solar cells, which is used commercially in most solar panels world-wide.  He introduced the benefit of strained quantum well lasers, an idea which is employed widely in most semiconductor lasers.  He is regarded as a Father of the Photonic BandGap concept, and he coined the term "Photonic Crystal".

 

Prof. Yablonovitch is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America, the IEEE, and the American Physical Society. He was elected a Member of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and as Foreign Member of the Royal Society of London.  He has been awarded the Adolf Lomb Medal, the W. Streifer Scientific Achievement Award, the R.W. Wood Prize, the Julius Springer Prize, the IET Mountbatten Medal (UK), the IEEE Photonics Award, the Harvey Prize (Israel), and the Rank Prize (UK).  He also has an honorary Ph.d. from the Royal Inst. of Tech., Stockholm Sweden, and from the Hong Kong Univ. of Sci. & Technology.