  Being a source of clean and renewable energy, the possibility to convert
solar radiation in electric current with high efficiency is one of the most
important topics of modern scientific research. Currently the exploitation of
interaction between nanocrystals seems to be a promising route to foster the
establishment of third generation photovoltaics. Here we adopt a fully
ab-initio scheme to estimate the role of nanoparticle interplay on the carrier
multiplication dynamics of interacting silicon nanocrystals. Energy and charge
transfer-based carrier multiplication events are studied as a function of
nanocrystal separation showing benefits induced by the wavefunction sharing
regime. We prove the relevance of these recombinative mechanisms for
photovoltaic applications in the case of silicon nanocrystals arranged in dense
arrays, quantifying at an atomistic scale which conditions maximize the
outcome.
