Corresponding Web Notes: Tomorrow's Photovoltaic Solar Cells (pptx / pdf / key)

Papers cited in lecture notes or used in their preparation:

U.S. National Renewable Energy Lab annual tabulation of research solar cell efficiency records - 2016 (link):

CIGS, CZTS and CZTSSe Thin Film Solar Cells:

Wikipedia's webpage about Copper Indium Gallium Selenide - CIGS (link)

Wikipedia's webpage about Copper Zinc Tin Sulfide - CZTS (link)

Dye Thin Film Solar Cells:

Highly Efficient Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells: Progress and Future Challenges, Y. Zhang et al., Energy and Environmental Science 6, pp. 1443-1464, 2013 (link / cached copy)

Perovskite Thin Film Dye Solar Cells:

The Light and Shade of Perovskite Solar Cells, Michael Grätzel, Nature Materials 13, pp. 838-842, November 2014 (link / cached copy)

Perovskite Solar Cells: Progress and Advancements, Elumalai et al., Energies 9, p. 861 (2016) (link / cached copy)

Quantum Dot Solar Cells:

My Nanoscience Class notes explaining Quantum Mechanic's trapped electron waves (pptx / pdf / key)

That note set's Resources Webpage with videos of wave trapping - including Mythbusters video (link)

Recent Progress on Quantum Dot Solar Cells: A Review, Sogabe et al., Photonics for Energy 6 (4), 040901 (2016) (link / cached copy)

Colloidal Quantum Dot Based Solar Cells: From Materials to Devices, Song & Jeong, Nano Convergence (2017) (link / cached copy)

Multi-junction / Tandem Solar Cells:

Webpage about partially solar powered New York City apartment village (link / cached copy)

Webpage about NASA's interest in Multi-junction / Tandem PV to power satellites / space stations (link / cached copy)

(I did not find broad and inclusive review papers spanning this category of solar cell. My guess is that the enormous breadth of possible multi-junction / tandem solar cell designs has fragmented the research literature into separate communities of authors)

Luminescent Solar Concentrators:

Wikipedia's webpage about Total Internal Reflection (link)

A short tutorial on Fiber Optic Telecommunications (link)

30 Years of Luminescent Solar Concentrator Research, M.G. Debije & P.P.C. Verbunt, Advanced Energy Materials 2, pp. 12-35 (2012) (link)

Doctor-blade Deposition of Quantum dots onto Standard Window Glass for Low-loss Large-area Luminescent Solar Concentrators, Li et al., Nature Energy 157, pp. 1-9 (2016) (link)

Near-Infrared Harvesting Transparent Luminescent Solar Concentrators, Zhao et al., Advanced Optical Materials 2, pp. 606-11 (2014) (link)

Thermophotovoltaics:

Metamaterials:

A review broadly defining metamaterials: Metamaterials in Electromagnetics, Ari Sihvola, Metamaterials 1, pp. 2-11 (2007) (link / cached copy)

Silicon Based Semiconductor Heterostructures: Column IV Bandgap Engineering, John C. Bean, Proceedings of the IEEE 80 (4), pp. 571-587 (1992) (link / cached copy)

Photonic Band-Gap Crystals, Eli Yablonovitch, J. Physics of Condensed Matter 5, pp. 2243-60 (1993) (link / cached copy)

Photonic Crystals in the Optical Regime - Past, Present and Future, Kraus & de la Rue, Progress in Quantum Electronics 23, pp. 51-96 (1999) (link / cached copy)

My Nanoscience class note set on Microfabrication / Micromachining (pptx / pdf / key)

My Nanoscience class note set on The Need for Self-Assembly (pptx / pdf / key)

Review of the "other" Metamaterials (subverting Maxwell's Equations via negative susceptibility or permeability):

Introduction to Metamaterials, Wartak et al., Physics in Canada 67 (1), pp. 30-34 (2011) (link / cached copy)

Theoretical Limits of Thermophotovoltaic Devices:

Absorber and Emitter for Solar Thermo-photovoltaic Systems to Achieve Efficiency Exceeding the Shockley-Queisser Limit, Rephaeli et al., Optics Express 17(7), 15145 (2009) (link / cached copy)

Design and Global Optimization of High-efficiency Thermophotovoltaic Systems, Bermel et al., Optics Express 18(S3), A314 (2010) (link / cached copy)

Metamaterial-based Integrated Plasmonic Absorber/Emitter for Solar Thermo-Photovoltaic Systems, Wu et al., J. Optics 14, pp. 1-7 (2012) (link)

Thermophotovoltaic Device Papers / Reviews:

Solar Thermophotovoltaics — Getting To 80% Efficiency, CleanTechica.com 2014 (link / cached copy) - NOTE: Despite its clickbait title, this technology news article actually reports on how efficiencies were topping out at 3.2% (far, far short of a predicted 80% theoretical maximum)

Overview and Status of Thermophotovoltaic Systems, Ferrari et al., Energy Proceedia 45, pp. 160-9 (2014) (link / cached copy)

Prospects for High-Performance Thermophotovoltaic Conversion Efficiencies Exceeding the Shockley–Queisser Limit, Zhou et al., Energy Conversion & Management 97, pp. 63-9 (2015) (link / cached copy)

Near-field Radiative Thermoelectric Energy Converters: A Review, Tervo et al. Front. Energy 12(1), pp. 5-21 (2018), 12(1) (link / cached copy)

High-efficiency Thermophotovoltaic Energy Conversion Enabled by a Metamaterial Selective Emitter, Woolf et al., Optica 5(2), pp.213 (2018) (link / cached copy)

Background paper for the preceding Woolf et al. report of 24.1% power conversion efficiency:

Heterogeneous Metasurface for High Temperature Selective emission, D. Woolf et al., Appl. Phys. Lett.105, 081110 (2014) (link / cached copy)

MIT's Thermophotovoltaic Device:

A Nanophotonic Solar Thermophotovoltaic Device, Lenert et al., Nature Nanotechnology 9 (2), pp. 126-30 (2014) (link / cached copy of preprint)

MIT news article about the preceding paper: How to tap the sun’s energy through heat as well as light (link / cached copy)

Experimental Observation of an Extremely Dark Material made by a Low-density Nanotube Array, Yang et al,. Nano Letters 8 (2), pp. 446-51 (2008) (link)

Effective Medium Theory of the Optical Properties of Aligned Carbon Nanotubes, Garcia-Vidal et al., Phys Rev Lett 78(22), pp. 4289-92 (1997) (link)