Recombination of carriers in quantum well solar cells

The quantum well (QW) solar cell is considered in the radiative limit. A (type I) QW is treated as an incremental cell added to a baseline cell made of the barrier material. By considering the QW to be isolated, in that carrier flow into and out of the QW is prevented, the open circuit voltage of the photon incremental cell is determined as a function of well width. This method indicates that a QW reduces the voltage of the baseline cell but the efficiency may still increase, particularly if the baseline cell's band gap is greater than or equal to its optimum value for the illuminating spectrum.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">></ETX>