Thermodynamic efficiency limits of classical and bifacial multi-junction tandem solar cells: An analytical approach

Bifacial tandem cells promise to reduce three fundamental losses (i.e., above-bandgap, below bandgap, and the uncollected light between panels) inherent in classical single junction photovoltaic (PV) systems. The successive filtering of light through the bandgap cascade and the requirement of current continuity make optimization of tandem cells difficult and accessible only to numerical solution through computer modeling. The challenge is even more complicated for bifacial design. In this paper, we use an elegantly simple analytical approach to show that the essential physics of optimization is intuitively obvious, and deeply insightful results can be obtained with a few lines of algebra. This powerful approach reproduces, as special cases, all of the known results of conventional and bifacial tandem cells and highlights the asymptotic efficiency gain of these technologies. Published by AIP Publishing.