Analytical treatment of Trivich-Flinn and Shockley-Queisser photovoltaic efficiency limits using polylogarithms

Solutions for the TrivichFlinn and ShockleyQueisser formulations of the limiting efficiency of photovoltaic conversion are derived in terms of polylogarithms. Earlier TrivichFlinn limits are shown to be zero temperature limits of the ShockleyQueisser approach. The limiting efficiency of an infinite stack of tandem cells was also investigated with an analytically based solution derived, the limit on photovoltaic conversion for a time-symmetric system, which is compared to the time-asymmetric limit. Copyright (c) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.