Abstract While conventional silicon photovoltaic (PV) systems suffer a performance degradation of approximately 0.5% per degree Celsius, this study investigates thin-film “hot mirror” spectral filters as a robust alternative to traditional area-scaling or unfiltered concentrated photovoltaics. Although increasing cell area or concentration provides linear gains in output, these methods fail to address the fundamental thermodynamic limitation where thermal dissipation accounts for over 50% of energy loss in single-junction devices. By implementing a simplified periodic quarter-wave stack designed without the need for complex computational optimization—such as damped least squares or needle variation—we present a film-based filter achieving 95% average transmittance. Through the application of Open Filters, SCAPS-1D, and the theoretical matrix method for performance analysis, it was determined that a silicon photovoltaic system can maintain an efficiency of 21.86% at a temperature of 50°C by selectively filtering the solar spectrum to reduce thermal absorption. This optical mechanism maintains the cell within its optimal thermal range, thus preventing voltage collapse under extreme environmental conditions.
Al-Arab et al. (Sun,) studied this question.