Photovoltaic Cells and Modules towards Terawatt Era

Progresses in photovoltaic technologies over the past years are evident from the lower costs, the rising efficiency, to the great improvements in system reliability and yield. Cumulative installed power yearly growths were on an average more than 40% in the period from 2007 to 2016 and in 2016, the global cumulative photovoltaic power installed has reached 320 GWp. The level 0.5 TWp could be reached before 2020. The production processes in the solar industry still have great potential for optimization both wafer based and thin film technologies. Trends following from the present technology levels are discussed, also taking into account other parts of photovoltaic systems that influence the cost of electrical energy produced. Present developments in the three generations of photovoltaic modules are discussed along with the criteria for the selection of appropriate photovoltaic module manufacturing technologies. The wafer based crystalline silicon(csilicon) technologies have the role of workhorse of present photovoltaic power generation, representing more than 90% of total module production. Further technology improvements have to be implemented without significantly increasing costs per unit, despite the necessarily more complex manufacturing processes involved. The tandem of c-silicon and thin film cells is very promising. Durability may be a limiting factor of this technology due to the dependence of the produced electricity cost on the module service time.

Simulation design of thin film lithium niobate electro-optic modulator with bimetallic layer electrodes

Thin-film lithium niobate electro-optical modulator will become the key device in the future optical communication,which has the advantages of high modulation rate,low half-wave voltage,large bandwidth,and easy integration compared with conventional bulk lithium niobate modulator.However,because the electrode gap of the lithium niobate film modulator is very narrow,when the microwave frequency gets higher,it leads to higher microwave loss,and the electro-optical performance of the modulator will be greatly reduced.Here,we propose a thin film lithium niobate electro-optic modulator with a bimetallic layer electrode structure to achieve microwave loss less than 8 dB/cm in the range of 200 GHz,exhibiting a voltage-length product of 1.1 V·cm and a 3 dB electro-optic bandwidth greater than 160 GHz.High-speed data transmission test has been performed,showing good performance.

All-optical modulator based on MoS_2-PVA thin film

The all-optical approach plays an important role in ultrafast all-optical signal processing, and the all-fiber scheme has a wide application in optical communications. In this letter, we investigate an all-optical modulator using few-layer molybdenum disulfide（MoS2）-polyvinyl alcohol（PVA） thin films based on the thermo-optic effect and obtain a long-time stable modulated output by applying polarization interference. By absorbing the injected 980 nm pump（control light）, MoS2 generates heat, changes the refractive index of MoS2, and modulates the polarization of light. The obtained thermal all-optical modulator has a rise time of 526 μs.