Research Initiation Award: Effects of atomic-scale disorder on carrier transport in photovoltaic cells under concentrated sunlight

研究启动奖为历史悠久的黑人学院和大学的初级和职业生涯中期教师提供支持，这些教师正在建立新的研究计划或重新定向和重建现有的研究计划。预计该奖项有助于进一步提高教师的研究能力和有效性，改善其所在机构的研究和教学，并让本科生参与研究经验。授予宾夕法尼亚州林肯大学的这一奖项，可能在许多领域产生更广泛的影响。该项目的目标是研究多晶硅太阳能电池中的载流子传输，以及在高入射光功率密度下包括低维量子点结构的太阳能电池中的载流子传输。这项研究预计将成为该大学新的工程科学课程开发的组成部分，并将与本科生的课程和顶尖研究联系在一起。与单晶材料中的载流子输运相比，人们对无序半导体中的载流子输运，特别是在硅中的载流子输运，当光照度变化时，还没有得到很好的理解。本项目提出了一种新的多晶硅和量子点太阳能电池的理论建模方法，该方法将现有的晶界附近载流子动力学理论与基于半经典Boltzmann和量子力学波包蒙特卡罗方法的计算方法相结合。该项目将把有关材料微观结构的实验数据纳入模型中，然后将实验和计算表征结果进行比较。预计的应用是更好地设计使用集中阳光的廉价光伏系统。

Research Initiation Awards provide support for junior and mid-career faculty at Historically Black Colleges and Universities who are building new research programs or redirecting and rebuilding existing research programs. It is expected that the award helps to further the faculty member's research capability and effectiveness, improves research and teaching at his home institution, and involves undergraduate students in research experiences. The award to Lincoln University, Pennsylvania, has potential broader impact in a number of areas. The goal of the project is to study carrier transport in polycrystalline silicon solar cells and in solar cells that include low-dimensional quantum dot structures under high incident optical power densities. The research is expected to be an integral part in the development of a new Engineering Science program at the university and will be linked to undergraduate students' coursework and capstone research. The carrier transport in disordered semiconductors, in particular in silicon, when the optical illumination is varied, is not understood well, compared to that in monocrystalline materials. This project proposes a new approach to theoretical modeling of solar cells made of polycrystalline silicone and quantum dot solar cells, which will combine existing theories of charge carrier dynamics near grain boundaries with a computational method that is based on both semiclassical Boltzmann and quantum mechanical wavepacket Monte Carlo methods. The project will incorporate experimental data about the material microstructure into the models and then compare the experimental and the computational characterization results. The expected application is a better design of inexpensive photovoltaic systems that use concentrated sunlight.