Abstract
To make the solar cell technology more competitive as a source of alternative energy, the study of how to improve its efficiency is essential. The detailed balance efficiency of traditional and one-intermediate band solar cell (one-IBSC) is analyzed by using realistic spectra at AM0 and AM1.5 under various light concentrations. Theoretically, the optimum location for one-IB is investigated to determine the maximum efficiency of one-IBSC. The quantum dot (QD) intermediate band solar cell is studied with the effect of some parameters for QD such as width size (QDW) and barrier thickness (BT) to determine the optimum location of one-IB. The main results conclude that the one-IBSC under AM0 spectrum has maximum balanced efficiencies reached to 45.70% and 63.56% for 1 Sun and maximum light concentration, respectively. While for AM1.5 spectrum these efficiencies are 49.35% and 67.60% with the same conditions of AM0 spectrum. The results also show that the maximum balanced efficiencies for one-IBSC nearly achieved when they are processed by QDs which have the main parameters, QDW and BT. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.