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Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Theory Of Carrier Transport From First Principles: Applications In Photovoltaic And Thermoelectric Materials, Alireza Faghaninia
Theory Of Carrier Transport From First Principles: Applications In Photovoltaic And Thermoelectric Materials, Alireza Faghaninia
McKelvey School of Engineering Theses & Dissertations
New sources of energy that are environmentally friendly, cost-effective, and renewable are essential if we are to combat the effects of global climate change. Two of these sources are solar photovoltaic (PV) cells to convert sunlight into electricity and thermoelectric (TE) devices to convert heat to electricity. To be practical on a large scale, the properties (e.g. electrical conductivity, band gap, Seebeck coefficient, etc) of the the underlying materials must be improved significantly through judicious control of structure and composition. Significant understanding of materials properties is required to design and engineer new high-performing materials. First principles calculations using density functional …
Photovoltaics: An Investigation Into The Origins Of Efficiency On All Scales, Jeremy Alexander Bannister
Photovoltaics: An Investigation Into The Origins Of Efficiency On All Scales, Jeremy Alexander Bannister
Senior Projects Spring 2016
This project is comprised of a set of parallel investigations, which share the common mo- tivation of increasing the efficiency of photovoltaics. First, the reader is introduced to core concepts of photovoltaic energy conversion via a semi-classical description of the phys- ical system. Second, a key player in photovoltaic efficiency calculations, the exciton, is discussed in greater quantum mechanical detail. The reader will be taken through a nu- merical derivation of the low-energy exciton states in various geometries, including a line segment, a circle and a sphere. These numerical calculations are done using Mathematica, a computer program which, due to …