Spatial and doping effects on radiative recombination in thin-film near-field photonic energy converters

Abstract

Modeling radiative recombination is crucial to the analysis of photonic energy converters. In this work, a local radiative recombination coefficient is defined and derived based on fluctuational electrodynamics that is applicable to thin-film cells in both the near field and far field. The predicted radiative recombination coefficient of an InAs cell deviates from the van Roosbroeck-Shockley relation when the thickness is less than 10 um and the difference exceeds fourfold with a 10 nm film. The local radiative recombination coefficient is orders of magnitude higher when an InAs cell is configured in the near field. The local radiative recombination coefficient reduces as the doping level approaches that of a degenerate semiconductor. The maximum output power and efficiency of a thermoradiative cell would be apparently overpredicted if the luminescence coefficient (defined in this letter) were taken as unity for heavily doped semiconductors.