Everhart Lecture

Although possible, ultra high solar cell efficiencies (>50%) have not been achieved because of limitations by current fabrication methods. Spectrum-splitting modules, or architectures that employ optical elements to divide the incident spectrum into different color bands, are promising because they can convert each photon more efficiently than traditional methods. This talk discusses our design and prototyping efforts to create such a spectrum-splitting module. We explore the spectrum-splitting optics and geometric optimizations in the context of high efficiency designs. We show a design that achieves 50% efficiency with realistic device losses and geometric constraints.
Refreshments will be served at 5:00pm; lecture starts at 5:30pm. All members of the Caltech community are encouraged to attend!

For more information, please visit www.its.caltech.edu/~els.