Advanced Concepts for Solar Energy

The micro‐ and nanophotonics are key enabling technologies for solar energy conversion. This chapter presents a nonexhaustive review of current and future advanced concepts that micro‐ and nanophotonics have been enabled. Nanophotonics can indeed overcome numerous loss processes that limit the solar conversion efficiency of solar cells with a single bandgap (E_g). The chapter gives some selected examples of nanophotonic technologies that having the potential to overcome the theoretical yield thresholds and offers a glimpse of the wide variety of the photonic approaches. Following the trend in the photovoltaic (PV) industry to decrease the thickness of the wafers, photon management has become crucial for maintaining the same absorption and, therefore, the same efficiency as thick solar cells. Nanophotonics offers new perspectives toward high‐efficiency solar cells because it allows controlling some material properties. Compared to bulk materials, changes in the energy level distribution are indeed observed in nanoparticles due to certain quantum confinement effects.