Ultimative Photovoltaics

The transition towards a society powered by 100% renewable energy necessitates the widespread de-ployment of photovoltaics. This poses a challenge due to the limited availability of resources and space. To address this, breakthrough technologies that consume fewer resources and achieve higher conversion efficiencies than the dominant silicon technology are required. The overarching goal of UltiMatePV is to re-invent the modern solar cell and open the gate to a new generation of resource-saving photovoltaic technology with highest conversion efficiencies. Enabling light-trapping beyond the Lambertian limit, based on schemes such as multi-resonant photonics, will allow for the realiza-tion of higher efficiency solar cells with typically 10x less use of semiconductor materials and thus reduce the required resources tremendously. This strongly reduced device thickness will also lead to confinement of the photo-generated charge carriers. The resulting increase of the carrier concentration will open the door for the realization of the worldwide first efficient hot-carrier cell, in which most of the carriers can be extracted before they thermalize. A new generation of devices based on the three currently relevant types of semiconductor absorbers (Si, III-V, perovskite) will be researched, account-ing for, e.g., the new requirements in terms of compatibility with resonant optical structures and ultra-low interface defect density. The unique complementary consortium of experimental, theoretical and modelling teams will overcome the Shockley Queisser limit for single junction solar cells with both ultrathin multi-junction and hot-carrier solar cells, enabling the first experimental proof of effects pre-dicted theoretically. We aim for a solar cell with an efficiency of 40%, requiring 10 times less semi-conductor material than classical devices, while paving the way to a broader range of other optoelec-tronic devices.