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[15a-422-1] A consideration of equilibrium condition in Shockley-Queisser limit for solar cell efficiency
Keywords:solar cell, efficiency, Shockley-Queisser limit
The “detailed balance limit” for the solar cell efficiency reported by W. Shockley and J. Queisser in 1961 is based on a very simple assumption that the radiative recombination of electron-hole pairs should balance a part of the blackbody radiation of the ambient temperature at the thermal equilibrium state, where any material parameters such as effective masses and band structures were not considered. The authors investigated the equilibrium condition by taking the material parameters based on the statistics for electron in semiconductors into account. The bandgap dependence of radiative and nonradiative recombination has been derived. A practical limit of conversion efficiency and its bandgap dependence have been made clear.