Tight binding modeling of intermediate band solar cells based on InAs/GaAs quantum dot arrays

We study the electronic structure of vertically stacked cubic quantum dots for the purpose of exploring the efficient design of quantum dot intermediate solar cells. We analyzed the dependence of the miniband levels and widths on the number of quantum dots as well as the inter-dot spacing by combining the finite element method and tight-binding method. Regarding the calculated energy band structure, the detailed balance model has been employed and the conversion efficiency has been estimated to be 56.3%.