Potential of transition metal nitrides and hydrides as hot carrier solar cell absorbers

The hot carrier (HC) solar cell aims to minimize the major losses in single junction solar cells due to the non-absorbance of the sub-bandgap photons and thermalisation of above bandgap photons (‘hot carriers’) and hence can achieve very high efficiencies. One of the crucial requirements for this is to have an absorber which can sufficiently reduce the rate of hot carrier cooling so that they can be collected at higher energies. Bulk, abundant and non-toxic materials can facilitate cheap fabrication methods thereby significantly reduce generation cost of solar electricity. In this paper we will introduce a few bulk materials as potential candidates for HC solar cell absorber.