Abstract
The direct conversion of solar light into electrical energy is one option for the use of renewable energies. Since the life expectancy of our source of radiation, the Sun, amounts to another 4.5 billion years, the reservoir of solar radiation is effectively inexhaustible to individual human beings. In the middle and long term future, it will represent the only driving force for departures from thermal-equilibrium conditions, e.g., for biological life on our globe.
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Notes
- 1.
Here we assume that, despite the departure from thermal equilibrium, due to fast energy and momentum relaxation compared to relaxation to the ground states, a maximum entropy distribution in the respective excited states is established which allows for the introduction of a skalar variable ‘temperature’.
- 2.
The driving force is in fact the gradient of the chemical potential of relevant species. A general argument in favor of this viewpoint is also represented by reference to the Schrödinger equation, in which forces do not occur but instead the dependence on potentials emerges.
References
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P. Würfel, Physik der Solarzellen (Spektrum Akademischer Verlag, Heidelberg, 2000)
P. Würfel, Physics of Solar Cells (Wiley-VCH, Weinheim, 2009)
W. Shockley, H.-J. Queisser, J. Appl. Phys. 32, 510 (1961)
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Bauer, G.H. (2015). Introduction. In: Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conversion. Lecture Notes in Physics, vol 901. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-46684-1_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-46684-1_1
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