Improving photovoltaics by adding extra terminals to extract hot carriers

Abstract: Photovoltaic cells usually have two terminals, one collecting electrons and the other collecting holes. Can more terminals improve such solar cells? Energy-filtering terminals could collect "hot" carriers (electrons or holes not yet relaxed to the band edge), with other terminals for low-energy carriers. For collection faster than carrier-phonon relaxation, we predict four-terminal cells with higher power output than optimal two-terminal cells -- more than 40% higher for fast carrier collection. Similar effects will occur in multi-terminal thermoelectrics exploiting non-equilibrium distributions