Increasing efficiency in intermediate band solar cells with overlapping absorptions

Intermediate band (IB) materials are promising candidates for realizing high efficiency solar cells. In IB photovoltaics, photons are absorbed in one of three possible electronic transitions—valence to conduction band, valence to intermediate band, or intermediate to conduction band. With fully concentrated sunlight, when the band gaps have been chosen appropriately, the highest efficiency IB solar cells require that these three absorptions be non-overlapping, so absorbed photons of fixed energy contribute to only one transition. The realistic case of overlapping absorptions, where the transitions compete for photons, is generally considered to be a source of loss. We show that overlapping absorptions can in fact lead to significant improvements in IB solar cell efficiencies, especially for IB that are near the middle of the band gap. At low to moderate concentration, the highest efficiency requires overlapping absorptions. We use the detailed-balance method and indicate how much overlap of the absorptions is required to achieve efficiency improvements, comparing with some known cases. These results substantially broaden the set of materials that can be suitable for high-efficiency IB solar cells.