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Electrical and Computer Engineering

Purdue University

Photovoltaic

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Full-Text Articles in Engineering

Simulation Design For Photovoltaics Using Finite Difference Time Domain And Quadratic Complex Rational Function Methods, Jacob R. Duritsch, Haejun Chung, Peter Bermel Aug 2015

Simulation Design For Photovoltaics Using Finite Difference Time Domain And Quadratic Complex Rational Function Methods, Jacob R. Duritsch, Haejun Chung, Peter Bermel

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Photovoltaics (PV) can in principle supply enough renewable energy to offset a great deal of fossil fuel usage. To achieve this transition, it is critical to develop improved PV cells with decreased material costs and improved efficiencies. This goal can be greatly facilitated by a tool simulating the absorption and efficiency of experimentally relevant 3-D PV designs made of realistic materials, including those that have not yet been discovered. By incorporating the quadratic complex rational function algorithm (QCRF) with the finite difference time domain methods (FDTD), simulations can include frequency response and optical properties, while allowing full customization of tandem …


Solar-Combined Thermoelectric Power Generation Simulator, Hemanth Mullangi Chenchu, Kazuaki Yazawa, Je-Hyeong Bahk Aug 2014

Solar-Combined Thermoelectric Power Generation Simulator, Hemanth Mullangi Chenchu, Kazuaki Yazawa, Je-Hyeong Bahk

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Photovoltaic (PV) devices are gaining popularity in harnessing solar energy as a form of sustainable energy source to generate electricity. However, these devices including tandem PV cells are limited to utilizing only high energy photons from the solar spectrum. This curtails their efficiency restricting them from being employed in mega Watts scale power generation. This study develops a software tool that allows engineers to tap into the wasted wavelengths of the spectrum by adding a thermoelectric (TE) module and a bottoming steam turbine cycle thus spreading the use of the spectrum. The tool allows investigating how power output and thus …


Finite-Difference Time-Domain Simulation Of Photovoltaic Structures Using A Graphical User Interface For Meep, Xin Tze Tee, Peter Bermel Oct 2013

Finite-Difference Time-Domain Simulation Of Photovoltaic Structures Using A Graphical User Interface For Meep, Xin Tze Tee, Peter Bermel

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

There is a large and growing need for accurate full-wave optical simulations of complex systems such as photovoltaic (PV) cells, particularly at the nanoscale. A finite-difference time-domain tool known as MEEP offers this capability in principle, through C++ libraries and the Scheme programming language. For expert users, this approach has been quite successful, but there is also great interest from new and less frequent users in starting to use MEEP. In order to facilitate this process, we have developed a graphical user interface (GUI) for MEEP, geared toward simulation of 2D and 3D PV cell geometries, freely available through a …


Pvpanel Sim 2.0 – Pv Module Simulation With Improved Device Physics, Mario Rentería Piñón, Muhammad A. Alam Oct 2013

Pvpanel Sim 2.0 – Pv Module Simulation With Improved Device Physics, Mario Rentería Piñón, Muhammad A. Alam

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Efficiency is a crucial parameter to consider when fabricating thin film (TF) photovoltaic panels because there is a significant efficiency drop between lab scale cells and large modules. PVpanel Sim is a circuit simulation using SPICE tool which combines the effects of the major reasons of efficiency reduction, like shunt leakages and sheet resistance, with external factors like irradiance and the effects of shadowing in order to provide the user with a better understanding of how a solar panel would behave. For the current version of the tool a basic equivalent model for individual cells is used with ideal components, …


Stanford Stratified Structure Solver (S4) Simulation Tool, Chang Liu, Xufeng Wang, Peter Bermel Oct 2013

Stanford Stratified Structure Solver (S4) Simulation Tool, Chang Liu, Xufeng Wang, Peter Bermel

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

The Stanford Stratified Structure Solver (S4) developed in 2012 allows for fast, accurate prediction of optical propagation through complex 3D structures. However, there have been two key challenges preventing wider use to date: the use of a specialized control language, and the difficulty of incorporating realistic materials parameters. In this project, both concerns have been addressed. We have constructed a graphical user interface as an alternative, using the open-source Rappture platform on nanoHUB. This has been combined with a comprehensive materials database known as PhotonicsDB, which incorporates materials optical data drawn from carefully vetted sources. An Octave script file was …


Time Domain Simulation Of Novel Photovoltaic Materials, Haejun Chung Jan 2013

Time Domain Simulation Of Novel Photovoltaic Materials, Haejun Chung

Open Access Theses

Thin-film silicon-based solar cells have operated far from the Shockley- Queisser limit in all experiments to date. Novel light-trapping structures, however, may help address this limitation. Finite-difference time domain simulation methods offer the potential to accurately determine the light-trapping potential of arbitrary dielectric structures, but suffer from materials modeling problems. In this thesis, existing dispersion models for novel photovoltaic materials will be reviewed, and a novel dispersion model, known as the quadratic complex rational function (QCRF), will be proposed. It has the advantage of accurately fitting experimental semiconductor dielectric values over a wide bandwidth in a numerically stable fashion. Applying …