Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha

Takeshi Nishikawa

Takashi Shimazu

Satoshi Iguchi

Satoshi Aoyama

Satoshi Yamazaki

Koichi Numata

Tomonori Nagashima

Kazuhisa Kunitake

Shuichi Kubo

In a fuel cell system , a cracking unit is provided upstream of a reformer . When the cracking unit is supplied with oxygen and gasoline as a hydrocarbon-based fuel, the gasoline is partially oxidized and decomposed using oxidation-generated heat to give a hydrocarbon with a lower carbon number. The hydrocarbon with the lower carbon number obtained by such gasoline pyrolysis is fed to the reformer and supplied to a reforming reaction zone.

Fuel reforming apparatus

A solar cell that is capable of having a thickness optimum for the highest photoelectric conversion efficiency and achieves reduction of carrier recombination loss is provided. For this purpose, a solar cell (10) is formed by stacking a top cell (12) including an n.sup.+ layer, a p layer, and a p.sup.+ layer, and a bottom cell (14) including an n.sup.+ layer and a p.sup.+ layer arranged at the bottom of the p layer along the back surface. The top cell (12) has a band gap wider than that of the bottom cell (14). A top electrode (18) is formed at the n.sup.+ layer of the top cell (12), while a negative electrode (26) and a positive electrode (28) are individually connected to the n.sup.+ layer and the p.sup.+ layer of the bottom cell (14), respectively. These negative and positive electrodes (26, 28) serve as a pair of electrodes of the bottom cell (14) and the positive electrode (28) is also used as the other electrode of the top cell (12), forming a pair with the top electrode (18) which is one electrode of the top cell (12). As a result, the minority carriers generated in the top and bottom cells (12, 14) can be individually obtained from the electrodes of the respective cells where they are generated.

Tandem solar cell

Growing community of inventors

Toyota, Japan

Takeshi Nishikawa