Date

2022-8-25

Author

Atila, Sena

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Solar energy has a great potential to provide for our energy demand. However, due to the broadband nature of the Sun, solar cells encounter efficiency losses. For singlejunction GaAs solar cells, the efficiency is measured as 27.6% at most [1]. Previously, the broadband light is experimentally split and concentrated to chosen positions on the CCD camera as three sub-bands to utilize the full spectrum of the Sun, and a particular type of diffractive optical element (SpliCon) is obtained [2]. In this thesis, we demonstrate a system with optical elements, a gallium arsenide (GaAs) solar cell and Si/InGaAs photodetectors for the concentration of the broadband light (360 - 2600 nm) to increase the performance of the solar cell and photodetectors. After passing through several optical elements, broadband light is spatially controlled on laterally arranged GaAs solar cell and Si/InGaAs photodetectors via a spatial light modulator (SLM). By sequentially scanning each pixel of the SLM, we alter the phase of the incident light, and consequently, we increase the electrical currentgenerated by GaAs solar cell. We obtain an excess ∼ 6% to ∼ 11% short-circuit current read from GaAs. At the maximum power point, the excess current varies from ∼ 10% to ∼ 20%, while the power output increases from ∼ 6% to ∼ 14% for the different numbers of superpixels. For Si and InGaAs photodetector, we achieve ∼ 6% to ∼ 13% and ∼ 9% to ∼ 16% RMS voltage value, respectively.

Subject Keywords

wavefront shaping, spatial light modulator, diffractive optical element, solar energy,solar concentration

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/99748

Collections

Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Thesis