The performance of solar cells has improved quickly in recent years, the latest research focuses on thin cells, multijunction cells, solar cells of the group III-V compounds, Tandem cells, etc. In the present work, numerical simulations are developed, using SENTAURUS TCAD as a tool, in order to obtain a solar cell model based on Galium Arsenide (GaAs). This solar cell corresponds to the so-called "Thin Films" due to the fact that can make layers thinner than we would have if we work with conventional semiconductors, such as; Silicon or Germanium; thus opening the possibility of placing the cell as a top layer within a tandem solar cell configuration with compounds of group III-V. That is why two types of simulations are performed with respect to the contact of the rear contact; one corresponds to the cell with a lower contact equal to the length of the cell and the other with a small contact of 5 μm. In addition, the cell undergoes an optimization process by modifying the geometry and doping of the layers that comprise it, in order to improve its performance. To achieve this objective, the initial conditions and the appropriate simulation parameters must be determined, which have been selected and corroborated with the literature, allowing us to arrive at coherent results and optimal models of solar cell design through numerical simulations.

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Concentrated solar power technologies have been studied in recent years as a potential solution for energy production industry , however this kind of systems face different challenges in order to increase thermal performance and efficiency. This paper presents the results of a thermal analysis on a parabolic trough collector with different receivers internal fins configurations, systems were studied in CFD Solidworks® flow simulation software and compared with a traditional parabolic collector with cylindrical receiver. Results shows that the lowest thermal performance was achieved with a cylindrical pipe, instead fractal fins receiver with 5 internal fins achieves a temperature increase of 27% and the best pipe configuration was fractal Descartes with 12 internal pipes which e the cylindrical temperature in 29%.

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