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GaSb solar cells grown on GaAs via interfacial misfit arrays for use in the III-Sb multi-junction cell

Nelson, George T., Juang, Bor-Chau, Slocum, Michael A., Bittner, Zachary S., Laghumavarapu, Ramesh B., Huffaker, Diana ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5946-4481 and Hubbard, Seth M. 2017. GaSb solar cells grown on GaAs via interfacial misfit arrays for use in the III-Sb multi-junction cell. Applied Physics Letters 111 (23) , 231104. 10.1063/1.4991548

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Abstract

Growth of GaSb with low threading dislocation density directly on GaAs may be possible with the strategic strain relaxation of interfacial misfit arrays. This creates an opportunity for a multi-junction solar cell with access to a wide range of well-developed direct bandgap materials. Multi-junction cells with a single layer of GaSb/GaAs interfacial misfit arrays could achieve higher efficiency than state-of-the-art inverted metamorphic multi-junction cells while forgoing the need for costly compositionally graded buffer layers. To develop this technology, GaSb single junction cells were grown via molecular beam epitaxy on both GaSb and GaAs substrates to compare homoepitaxial and heteroepitaxial GaSb device results. The GaSb-on-GaSb cell had an AM1.5g efficiency of 5.5% and a 44-sun AM1.5d efficiency of 8.9%. The GaSb-on-GaAs cell was 1.0% efficient under AM1.5g and 4.5% at 44 suns. The lower performance of the heteroepitaxial cell was due to low minority carrier Shockley-Read-Hall lifetimes and bulk shunting caused by defects related to the mismatched growth. A physics-based device simulator was used to create an inverted triple-junction GaInP/GaAs/GaSb model. The model predicted that, with current GaSb-on-GaAs material quality, the not-current-matched, proof-of-concept cell would provide 0.5% absolute efficiency gain over a tandem GaInP/GaAs cell at 1 sun and 2.5% gain at 44 suns, indicating that the effectiveness of the GaSb junction was a function of concentration.

Item Type: Article
Date Type: Published Online
Status: Published
Schools: Physics and Astronomy
Subjects: Q Science > QC Physics
Publisher: American Institute of Physics
ISSN: 0003-6951
Date of First Compliant Deposit: 12 December 2017
Date of Acceptance: 4 November 2017
Last Modified: 03 May 2023 11:08
URI: https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/107526

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