Dear Colleagues:
Prof. Carmel Rotschild from Technion - Israel Institute of Technology will be visiting our
department this Friday, July 25, and will deliver a lecture at 2PM in Rm 3-333.
Lecture Title & Abstract: Thermally Enhanced Photoluminescence for
Efficient Photovoltaics, Assaf Manor1, Leopoldo L. Martin2 and Carmel Rotschild1,2
1 Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute, Technion − Israel Institute of Technology,
Haifa 32000, Israel, 2 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Technion − Israel Institute
of Technology, Haifa 32000, Israel
Email: carmelr@.technion.ac.il<mailto:carmelr@.technion.ac.il>
The Shockley-Queisser (SQ) efficiency limit for single-junction solar-cells is to a great
extent due to inherent heat dissipation accompanying the quantum process of
electro-chemical potential generation. Concepts such as solar thermo-photovoltaics (STPV)
and thermo-photonics aim to harness this dissipated heat, yet exceeding the SQ limit has
not been achieved due to high operating temperatures. Here we experimentally demonstrate
the generalized Planck's law for endothermic-photoluminescence (PL) at high
temperatures, and the inherent abrupt transition from PL to thermal emission. We also show
how endothermic PL generates orders of magnitude more energetic photons than thermal
emission at similar temperatures. Relying on these observations, we propose and
theoretically study a highly efficient solar-energy converter, wherein solar radiation is
absorbed by a low-bandgap PL material. The dissipated heat is emitted by endothermic PL,
and harvested by a higher-bandgap photovoltaic cell. While such device operates at much
lower temperatures than STPV, the theoretical efficiencies approaches 70%, bringing its
realization into reach.
Speaker Biography: Carmel got his PhD from the Physics Department at Technion in
2008. He was subsequently a postdoc with Prof. Marc Baldo at MIT before joining the
faculty of the Mechanical Engineering Department at Technion. You can read more on his
research here:
http://meeng.technion.ac.il/Carmel_Rotschild.htm<https://mailtrack.io/tr…
I hope to see you at his seminar on Friday.
Best wishes,
Svetlana Boriskina
Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Director of the Center for Excitonics
Associate Director, Research Laboratory of Electronics
MIT, Room 13-3053
77 Massachusetts Av, Cambridge, MA 02139
baldo@mit.edu<mailto:baldo@mit.edu>
http://softsemi.mit.edu/
http://www.rle.mit.edu/excitonics/