The Viability of Nanotechnology-based InGaN Solar Photovoltaic Devices for Sustainable Energy Generation

Abstract

The unrestrained combustion of fossil fuels has resulted in vast pollution at the local scale throughout the world, while contributing to global warming at a rate that seriously threatens the stability of many of the world's ecosystems. Solar photovoltaic (PV) technology is a clean, sustainable and renewable energy conversion technology that can help meet the energy demands of the world’s growing population. Although PV technology is mature with commercial modules obtaining over 20% conversion efficiency there remains considerable opportunities to improve performance. The nearly global access to the solar resource coupled to nanotechnology innovation-driven decreases in the costs of PV, provides a path for a renewable energy source to significantly reduce the adverse anthropogenic impacts of energy use by replacing fossil fuels. This study explores several approaches to improving indium gallium nitride-based PV efficiency with nanotechnology: optical enhancement, microstructural optimization for electronic material quality and increasing the spectral response via bandgap engineering. The results showing multibandgap engineering with InGaN and impediments to widespread deployment and commercialization are discussed including technical viability, intellectual property laws and licensing, material resource scarcities, and economics. Future work is outlined and conclusions are drawn to overcome these limitations and improve PV device performance using methods that can scale to the necessary terawatt level.

Design of Multijunction Photovoltaic Cells Optimized for Varied Atmospheric Conditions

“…For example, indium gallium nitride (In Ga 1− N) alloys are promising thin-film PV materials for multijunction devices due to a tunable band gap from 0.7 eV to 3.4, which covers nearly the entire solar spectrum [1,2]. This promise has led to a recent explosion in scientific interest in the material as primary material for multijunction cells and significant PV device efficiency improvements have already been reported [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18]. Although there are still challenges such as phase segregation, indium fluctuation, and lack of matched substrates in In Ga 1− N PV, there are no fundamental limitations to the material forming high-efficiency PV devices [1-4, 16, 18].…”