Pathways to high-efficiency GaAs solar cells on low-cost substrates

Venkatasubramanian, R.; Siivola, E.; O’Quinn, Brooks; Keyes, B. M.; Ahrenkiel, R. K.

doi:10.1063/1.53482

Cited by 9 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…8 The supersaturation can be tuned at the substrate through control of the temperature gradient, facilitating selected-area epitaxy and epitaxial layer overgrowth (ELO) on Si substrates. 12,13 These features could potentially enable growth of high-quality GaAs lms with large grains 14 on thermally/lattice-mismatched 15,16 or ceramic 17 substrates. This is signicant because in order to successfully utilize GaAs for terrestrial PV applications, in addition to developing an efficient growth technique, the substrate must either be inexpensive or reusable (e.g.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Doping and electronic properties of GaAs grown by close-spaced vapor transport from powder sources for scalable III–V photovoltaics

Ritenour

Boucher

DeLancey

et al. 2015

Energy Environ. Sci.

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mentioning

confidence: 99%

Doping and electronic properties of GaAs grown by close-spaced vapor transport from powder sources for scalable III–V photovoltaics

Ritenour

Boucher

DeLancey

et al. 2015

Energy Environ. Sci.

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“…However, the efficiencies remained less than 12% because of issues such as small grain size, diffusion of contaminants and dopants to the grain, and poor inter-grain quality [259,260]. In 1997, Venkatasubramanian et al reported NREL certified 18.2% efficient polycrystalline GaAs solar cells with V oc approaching 1 V (figure 17(a)) [261,262]. Their results show that along with sub-mm grain size, the use of a spacer layer between the n-GaAs absorber and p + emitter layer was also required to achieve high efficiency (figure 17(b)) [262].…”

Section: Multicrystalline Iii-v Heterojunction Solar Cellsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In 1997, Venkatasubramanian et al reported NREL certified 18.2% efficient polycrystalline GaAs solar cells with V oc approaching 1 V (figure 17(a)) [261,262]. Their results show that along with sub-mm grain size, the use of a spacer layer between the n-GaAs absorber and p + emitter layer was also required to achieve high efficiency (figure 17(b)) [262]. They showed that the use of the spacer layer did not have any effect when the cells were grown over a single-crystal germanium wafer, however, the dark current was reduced by a factor of 40 when the same spacer layer was used between n-p + GaAs junction grown on multi-crystalline germanium.…”

Section: Multicrystalline Iii-v Heterojunction Solar Cellsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Topical review: pathways toward cost-effective single-junction III–V solar cells

Raj¹,

Haggrén²,

Wong³

et al. 2021

J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys.

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III–V semiconductors such as InP and GaAs are direct bandgap semiconductors with significantly higher absorption compared to silicon. The high absorption allows for the fabrication of thin/ultra-thin solar cells, which in turn permits for the realization of lightweight, flexible, and highly efficient solar cells that can be used in many applications where rigidity and weight are an issue, such as electric vehicles, the internet of things, space technologies, remote lighting, portable electronics, etc. However, their cost is significantly higher than silicon solar cells, making them restrictive for widespread applications. Nonetheless, they remain pivotal for the continuous development of photovoltaics. Therefore, there has been a continuous worldwide effort to reduce the cost of III–V solar cells substantially. This topical review summarises current research efforts in III–V growth and device fabrication to overcome the cost barriers of III–V solar cells. We start the review with a cost analysis of the current state-of-art III–V solar cells followed by a subsequent discussion on low-cost growth techniques, substrate reuse, and emerging device technologies. We conclude the review emphasizing that to substantially reduce the cost-related challenges of III–V photovoltaics, low-cost growth technologies need to be combined synergistically with new substrate reuse techniques and innovative device designs.

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“…Optical grade polycrystalline Ge, which is comparable in cost with monocrystalline Si, was used in [22,23] as an epitaxy substrate for the growth of GaAs photocells. Cell efficiencies of 19% for a 4 cm 2 cell and 21% for a 0.25 cm 2 cell were achieved under AM1.5 spectrum [23]. The use of this material as an electrically active base has not yet been investigated.…”

Section: Germanium Photocellsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Silicon, germanium and silicon/germanium photocells for thermophotovoltaics applications

Bitnar

2003

Semicond. Sci. Technol.

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Silicon (Si) and germanium (Ge) are semiconducting materials, which are industrially used for the large-scale production of various electronic devices. Solar cells are commonly manufactured from Si. For thermophotovoltaics (TPV) Si has the disadvantage of a high bandgap of 1.1 eV, which requires the use of a spectrally matched selective emitter. Yb 2 O 3 is widely used as an emitter material to illuminate Si photocells. Si concentrator solar cells have been investigated for TPV applications, because they have a high performance at a typical illumination density of 1 W cm −2 in a TPV system. Non-concentrator solar cells achieve lower efficiencies under TPV conditions, but up to now they are more cost effective than concentrator cells. A new Si photocell optimized for TPV has a front side textured with rectangular grooves with vertically evaporated contact fingers and a rear surface mirror to reflect sub-bandgap radiation back to the emitter. Ge photocells have a bandgap of 0.66 eV and can effectively be illuminated by a selective Er 2 O 3 emitter. Their efficiencies are lower than those of photocells from low bandgap III/V materials, such as GaSb. But, due to low free carrier absorption in Ge, an effective rear surface mirror can be formed. A reflectance of up to 82-87% for sub-bandgap radiation and a cell efficiency of 13% for solar air mass 0 (AM0) radiation with a cutoff for wavelengths smaller than 900 nm have been achieved with a Ge TPV cell. SiGe photocells allow the variation of the bandgap as a function of the Ge content. In principle, a SiGe photocell can be matched to a given selective emitter spectrum. A first SiGe quantum dot solar cell has achieved 12% efficiency, but still suffers from a low open circuit voltage. The first TPV systems working with Si photocells have been built. A system efficiency of 2.4% can be achieved. The most promising application of Si-based TPV is likely to be an electrically self-powered residential heating system. For a self-powered operation, a TPV system efficiency of 1-2% is sufficient and Si photocells have the advantage of being inexpensive.

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Pathways to high-efficiency GaAs solar cells on low-cost substrates

Cited by 9 publications

References 0 publications

Doping and electronic properties of GaAs grown by close-spaced vapor transport from powder sources for scalable III–V photovoltaics

Doping and electronic properties of GaAs grown by close-spaced vapor transport from powder sources for scalable III–V photovoltaics

Topical review: pathways toward cost-effective single-junction III–V solar cells

Silicon, germanium and silicon/germanium photocells for thermophotovoltaics applications

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