2016 Volume 65 Issue 9 Pages 647-651
We studied effects of the internal electric field on the two-step photocurrent generation in quantum dot superlattice (QDSL) solar cells. We calculated the quantum efficiency of intersubbad photoexcited carriers in QDSL as a function of the internal electric field. In our calculation, we proposed a model of a QDSL structure in which electrons created by the interband transition are excited by subbandgap photons corresponding to the intersubband transition. We found that extra photocurrent caused by the two-step photoexcitation shows the maximum at a reverse biased electric field, whereas current generated by only the interband photoexcitation increases monotonically with increasing the electric field. The internal electric field of the solar cell can separate photocreated electron and hole in the SL miniband, and electron lifetime is extended, which improve the intersubband transition strength, and, therefore, the two-step photocurrent increases. Thus, the calculated result unveils that there is a trade-off relation between carrier separation in the SL miniband and electric-field induced carrier escape from QDSL. These results clarify that long electron lifetime extended by carrier separation is a key maximizing the two-step photocurrent generation in a QDSL solar cell.
