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Tail state formation in solar cell absorbers leads to a detrimental effect on solar cell performance. Nevertheless, the characterization of the band tailing in experimental semiconductor crystals is generally difficult. In this article, to determine the tail state generation in various solar cell materials, we have developed a quite general theoretical scheme in which the experimental Urbach energy is compared with the absorption edge energy derived from density functional theory (DFT) calculation. For this purpose, the absorption spectra of solar cell materials, including CdTe, CuInSe2 (CISe), CuGaSe2 (CGSe), Cu2ZnSnSe4 (CZTSe), Cu2ZnSnS4 (CZTS) and hybrid perovskites, have been calculated by DFT particularly using very-high-density k meshes. As a result, we find that the tail state formation is negligible in CdTe, CISe, CGSe and hybrid perovskite polycrystals. However, coevaporated CZTSe and CZTS layers exhibit very large Urbach energies, which are far larger than the theoretical counterparts. Based on DFT analysis results, we conclude that the quite large tail state formation observed in the CZTSe and CZTS originates from extensive cation disordering. In particular, even a slight cation substitution is found to generate unusual band fluctuation in CZT(S)Se. In contrast, CH3NH3PbI3 hybrid perovskite shows the sharpest absorption edge theoretically, which agrees with experiment., Comment: 24 pages, 11 figures

In developing photovoltaic devices with high efficiencies, quantitative determination of the carrier loss is crucial. In conventional solar-cell characterization techniques, however, photocurrent reduction originating from parasitic light absorption and carrier recombination within the light absorber cannot be assessed easily. Here, we develop a general analysis scheme in which the optical and recombination losses in submicron-textured solar cells are evaluated systematically from external quantum efficiency (EQE) spectra. In this method, the optical absorption in solar cells is first deduced by imposing the anti-reflection condition in the calculation of the absorptance spectrum, and the carrier extraction from the light absorber layer is then modeled by considering a carrier collection length from the absorber interface. Our analysis method is appropriate for a wide variety of photovoltaic devices, including kesterite solar cells [Cu2ZnSnSe4, Cu2ZnSnS4, and Cu2ZnSn(S,Se)4], zincblende CdTe solar cells, and hybrid perovskite (CH3NH3PbI3) solar cells, and provides excellent fitting to numerous EQE spectra reported earlier. Based on the results obtained from our EQE analyses, we discuss the effects of parasitic absorption and carrier recombination in different types of solar cells., Comment: 57 pages, 22 figures

We study the dynamics of multi-junction switching (MJS): several intrinsic Josephson junctions (IJJs) in an array switch to the finite voltage state simultaneously. The number of multi-switching junctions ($N$) was successfully tuned by changing the load resistance serially connected to an Bi$_2$Sr$_{1.6}$La$_{0.4}$CuO$_{6+\delta}$ IJJ array. The independence of the escape rates of $N$ in the macroscopic quantum tunneling regime indicates that MJS is a $successive$ switching process rather than a $collective$ process. The origin of MJS is explained by the gradient of a load curve and the relative magnitudes of the switching currents of quasiparticle branches in the current-voltage plane.

The optical conductivity measurements give a powerful tool to investigate the nature of the superconducting gap for conventional and unconventional superconductors. In this article, first, general analyses of the optical conductivity are given stemmed from the Mattis-Bardeen formula for conventional BCS superconductors to unconventional anisotropic superconductors. Second, we discuss the reflectance-transmittance (R-T) method which has been proposed to measure far-infrared spectroscopy. The R-T method provides us precise measurements of the frequency-dependent conductivity. Third, the optical conductivity spectra of the electron-doped cuprate superconductor Nd_{2-x}Ce_xCuO_4 are investigated based on the anisotropic pairing model. It is shown that the behavior of optical conductivity is consistent with an anisotropic gap and is well explained by the formula for d-wave pairing in the far-infrared region. The optical properties of the multiband superconductor MgB_2, i n which the existence of superconductivity with relatively high-T_c (39K) was recently announced, is also examined to determine the symmetry of superconducting gaps., Comment: 44 pages, 15 figures

We show that a two-band model with ${\bf k}$-dependent superconducting gaps well describes the transmission and optical conductivity measured for MgB$_2$ thin films. It is also shown that the two-band anisotropic model consistently describes the specific-heat jump and thermodynamic critical magnetic field $H_c$. A single-gap anisotropic model is shown to be insufficient to understand consistently optical and thermodynamic behaviors. In our model, the pairing symmetry in each band has an anisotropic characteristic which is determined almost uniquely; the superconducting gap in the $\sigma$-band has anisotropy in the ab-plane and the gap in the $\pi$-band has a prolate form exhibiting anisotropy in the c-direction. The anisotropy in the $\sigma$-band produces rather small effects on the physical properties compared to the anisotropy in the $\pi$-band., Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures

Opticcal conductivity spectra $\sigma_1(\omega)$ of Nd2-xCexCuO4 thin films, measured by the reflectance-transmittance method (R-T method) which has been proposed to investigate far-infrared spectroscopy, are investigated based on the anisotropic pairing model. Precise measurements of the frequency-dependent conductivity enable us to examine quantitatively the nature of the superconducting gap through infrared properties in the electron-doped high-Tc superconductors. We show that the behavior of optical conductivity $\sigma_1$ is consistent with the anisotropic superconducting gap and is well explained by the formula for d-wave pairing in the low-energy regime of the far-infrared region. Our results suggest that the electron-doped cuprate superconductors Nd2-xCexCuO4 have nodes in the superconducting gap., Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures