Paper
7 March 2014 Variable temperature carrier dynamics in bulk (In)GaAsNSb materials grown by MOVPE for multi-junction solar cells
Yongkun Sin, Zachary Lingley, Stephen LaLumondiere, Nathan Wells, William Lotshaw, Steven C. Moss, Tae Wan Kim, Luke J. Mawst, Thomas F. Kuech
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Abstract
III-V multi-junction solar cells are typically based on a triple-junction design that consists of an InGaP top junction, a GaAs middle junction, and a bottom junction that employs a 1 – 1.25 eV material grown on GaAs substrates. The most promising 1 – 1.25 eV material that is currently under extensive investigation is bulk dilute nitride such as (In)GaAsNSb lattice matched to GaAs substrates. The approach utilizing dilute nitrides has a great potential to achieve high performance triple-junction solar cells as recently demonstrated by Wiemer, et al., who achieved a record efficiency of 43.5% from multi-junction solar cells including MBE-grown dilute nitride materials [1]. Although MOVPE is a preferred technique over MBE for III-V multi-junction solar cell manufacturing, MOVPEgrown dilute nitride research is at its infancy compared to MBE-grown dilute nitride. In particular, carrier dynamics studies are indispensible in the optimization of MOVPE materials growth parameters to obtain improved solar cell performance. For the present study, we employed time-resolved photoluminescence (TR-PL) techniques to study carrier dynamics in MOVPE-grown bulk dilute nitride InGaAsN materials (Eg = 1 – 1.25 eV at RT) lattice matched to GaAs substrates. In contrast to our earlier samples that showed high background C doping densities, our current samples grown using different metalorganic precursors at higher growth temperatures showed a significantly reduced background doping density of ~ 1017 /cm3. We studied carrier dynamics in (In)GaAsNSb double heterostructures (DH) with different N compositions at room temperature. Post-growth annealing yielded significant improvements in carrier lifetimes of (In)GaAsNSb double heterostructure (DH) samples. Carrier dynamics at various temperatures between 10 K and RT were also studied from (In)GaAsNSb DH samples including those samples grown on different orientation substrates.
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Yongkun Sin, Zachary Lingley, Stephen LaLumondiere, Nathan Wells, William Lotshaw, Steven C. Moss, Tae Wan Kim, Luke J. Mawst, and Thomas F. Kuech "Variable temperature carrier dynamics in bulk (In)GaAsNSb materials grown by MOVPE for multi-junction solar cells", Proc. SPIE 8981, Physics, Simulation, and Photonic Engineering of Photovoltaic Devices III, 89811A (7 March 2014); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2037385
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KEYWORDS
Gallium arsenide

Carrier dynamics

Temperature metrology

Multijunction solar cells

Transmission electron microscopy

Annealing

Antimony

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