Modelling the effect of defects and cracks in solar cells' performance using the d1MxP discrete model.

Renewable energies are increasingly playing an important role in the world's energy supply. Society demands new solutions to solve environmental issues caused by fossil fuels. The importance of photovoltaic technology has been increasing and consequently, the necessity to have more accurate models to characterise the performance of solar cells during their entire lifetime has rose as well.

Modelling and Design of a Dual Depletion PIN Photodiode as Temperature Sensor.

Nowadays, optical systems play an important role in communications. Dual depletion PIN photodiodes are common devices that can operate in different optical bands, depending on the chosen semiconductors. However, since semiconductor properties vary with the surrounding conditions, some optical devices/systems can act as sensors.

Nanostructures for Solar Energy Harvesting.

Renewable energy sources are becoming more and more essential to energy production as societies evolve toward a fossil-fuel-free world. Solar energy is one of the most abundant sources of green energy. Nanoantennas can be used to improve and enhance the absorption of light into a photovoltaic cell in order to generate more current.

Multi-Junction Solar Cells and Nanoantennas.

Photovoltaic technology is currently at the heart of the energy transition in our pursuit to lean off fossil-fuel-based energy sources. Understanding the workings and trends of the technology is crucial, given the reality. With most conventional PV cells constrained by the Shockley-Queisser limit, new alternatives have been developed to surpass it.

Simulation of Solar Cells with Integration of Optical Nanoantennas.

The evolution of nanotechnology has provided a better understanding of light-matter interaction at a subwavelength scale and has led to the development of new devices that can possibly play an important role in future applications. Nanoantennas are an example of such devices, having gained interest in recent years for their application in the field of photovoltaic technology at visible and infrared wavelengths, due to their ability to capture and confine energy of free-propagating waves. This property results from a unique phenomenon called extraordinary optical transmission (EOT) where, due to resonant behavior, light passing through subwavelength apertures in a metal film can be transmitted in greater orders of magnitude than that predicted by classical theories.

Optical Nanoantennas for Photovoltaic Applications.

In the last decade, the development and progress of nanotechnology has enabled a better understanding of the light-matter interaction at the nanoscale. Its unique capability to fabricate new structures at atomic scale has already produced novel materials and devices with great potential applications in a wide range of fields. In this context, nanotechnology allows the development of models, such as nanometric optical antennas, with dimensions smaller than the wavelength of the incident electromagnetic wave.

Characterization and Design of Photovoltaic Solar Cells That Absorb Ultraviolet, Visible and Infrared Light.

The world is witnessing a tide of change in the photovoltaic industry like never before; we are far from the solar cells of ten years ago that only had 15-18% efficiency. More and more, multi-junction technologies seem to be the future for photovoltaics, with these technologies already hitting the mark of 30% under 1-sun. This work focuses especially on a state-of-the-art triple-junction solar cell, the GaInP/GaInAs/Ge lattice-matched, that is currently being used in most satellites and concentrator photovoltaic systems.

Influence of an aluminium concentrator corrosion on the output characteristic of a photovoltaic system.

The climate changes observed over the last decades have been promoting a massive transformation on the energy sector, that is still, in truth highly dependent on fossil fuels. Renewable energies are a plausible alternative, because they have lower emissions of toxic gases in comparison with non-renewable ones. In the group of renewable energies, solar technology has the biggest overall potential, mainly because it is cheap and easy to set.