File:ShockleyQueisserBreakdown2.svg

English: The Shockley-Queisser limit for the maximum possible efficiency of a solar cell (black), and the inevitable losses that limit it (other colors). The black height is energy that can be extracted as useful electrical power; the pink height is energy of below-bandgap photons; the green height is energy lost when hot photogenerated electrons and holes relax to the band edges; the blue height is energy lost in the tradeoff between low radiative recombination versus high operating voltage. The curves are all wiggly because of IR absorption bands in the atmosphere: I used the actual AM1.5G solar spectrum data. I cross-checked the black curve with independently-calculated ones and they agree to high accuracy, [1] [2]. The other curves besides the black curve are not published in exactly this form to my knowledge, but it's a straightforward part of the same calculation.