Dynamics and physical process of hot carriers in optoelectronic devices

As an important part of the third-generation photovoltaic concept, hot carrier solar cells (HCSCs) have attracted extensive attention in the field of energy conversion. As HCSCs have a great potential for extremely high power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 66% in the infinite multi-junction cell, immense publications and researches have been carried out. Harnessing hot carriers (HCs) before relaxation provides the potential way to overcome the thermodynamic limit of PCE. Unfortunately, HCs will have undesirable scattering with phonons or other carriers, losing energy before extracted effectively. How to utilize HCs effectively in materials is critical for improving the PCE of optoelectronic devices. This review provides a comprehensive understanding of HCs from the point view of interaction between incident photon and low dimensional materials, such as quantum dots (QDs), plasmonic metals and graphene. Among all the candidates, we highlight graphene is the most promising material that HCs has longer lifetime and unique process of carriers multiplication (CM), which makes it more possibly for improving the performance of solar cells and optoelectronic devices.

Automated summary

Hot carrier solar cells have the potential for high power conversion efficiency, but effectively utilizing hot carriers in materials is critical for improving performance.