Hot Carrier Solar Cells based on Inter-Valley Phonon Scattering: A New Approach towards a Practical Solution

Here, a new approach to extract hot carriers and circumvent the thermalization losses in single energy gap solar cells is introduced. Specifically, it is proposed to harness the properties of metastable satellite valleys in the conduction band via enhanced inter-valley carrier scattering, which inhibits and subsequently facilitates hot carrier extraction. Two established III-V systems are proposed to demonstrate the potential of this protocol and provide a route to the long-sought hot carrier solar cell under standard AM 1.5G conditions