Shermin Arab

Tandem Solar Cells Using GaAs Nanowires on Si: Design, Fabrication, and Observation of Voltage Addition

Multijunction solar cells provide us a viable approach to achieve efficiencies higher than the Shockley-Queisser limit. Due to their unique optical, electrical, and crystallographic features, semiconductor nanowires are good candidates to achieve monolithic integration of solar cell materials that are not lattice-matched. Here, we report the first realization of nanowire-on-Si tandem cells with the observation of voltage addition of the GaAs nanowire top cell and the Si bottom cell with an open circuit voltage of 0.956 V and an efficiency of 11.4%. Our simulation showed that the current-matching condition plays an important role in the overall efficiency. Furthermore, we characterized GaAs nanowire arrays grown on lattice-mismatched Si substrates and estimated the carrier density using photoluminescence. A low-resistance connecting junction was obtained using n(+)-GaAs/p(+)-Si heterojunction. Finally, we demonstrated tandem solar cells based on top GaAs nanowire array solar cells grown on bottom planar Si solar cells. The reported nanowire-on-Si tandem cell opens up great opportunities for high-efficiency, low-cost multijunction solar cells.

Doping concentration dependence of the photoluminescence spectra of n-type GaAs nanowires

In this letter, the photoluminescence spectra of n-type doped GaAs nanowires, grown by the metal organic chemical vapor deposition method, are measured at 4 K and 77 K. Our measurements indicate that an increase in carrier concentration leads to an increase in the complexity of the doping mechanism, which we attribute to the formation of different recombination centers. At high carrier concentrations, we observe a blueshift of the effective band gap energies by up to 25 meV due to the Burstein-Moss shift. Based on the full width at half maximum (FWHM) of the photoluminescence peaks, we estimate the carrier concentrations for these nanowires, which varies from 6 × 1017 cm−3 (lightly doped), to 1.5 × 1018 cm−3 (moderately doped), to 3.5 × 1018 cm−3 (heavily doped) as the partial pressure of the disilane is varied from 0.01 sccm to 1 sccm during the growth process. We find that the growth temperature variation does not affect the radiative recombination mechanism; however, it does lead to a slight enhancemen...

Carbon-doped GaAs single junction solar microcells grown in multilayer epitaxial assemblies

A stack design for carbon-doped GaAs single junction solar microcells grown in triple-layer epitaxial assemblies is presented. As-grown materials exhibit improved uniformity of photovoltaic performance compared to zinc-doped systems due to the lack of mobile dopants while a slight degradation exists in middle and bottom devices. Detailed electrical and optical characterizations of devices together with systematic studies of acceptor reactivation reveal carbon-related defects accompanied by carrier compensation, and associated scattering and recombination centers are primarily responsible for the degraded contact properties and photovoltaic performance, resulting from prolonged thermal treatments of early-grown materials during the multilayer epitaxial growth.

Enhanced Fabry-Perot resonance in GaAs nanowires through local field enhancement and surface passivation

AbstractWe report substantial improvements in the photoluminescence (PL) efficiency and Fabry-Perot (FP) resonance of individual GaAs nanowires through surface passivation and local field enhancement, enabling FP peaks to be observed even at room temperature. For bare GaAs nanowires, strong FP resonance peaks can be observed at 4 K, but not at room temperature. However, depositing the nanowires on gold substrates leads to substantial enhancement in the PL intensity (5X) and 3.7X to infinite enhancement of FP peaks. Finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulations show that the gold substrate enhances the PL spectra predominately through enhanced absorption (11X) rather than enhanced emission (1.3X), predicting a total PL enhancement of 14X in the absence of non-radiative recombination. Despite the increased intensity of the FP peaks, lower Q factors are observed due to losses associated with the underlying gold substrate. As a means of reducing the non-radiative recombination in these nanowires, the surface states in the nanowires can be passivated by either an ionic liquid (1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide (EMIM TFSI)) or an AlGaAs surface layer to achieve up to 12X enhancement of the photoluminescence intensity and observation of FP peaks at room temperature without a gold substrate.

Effects of Surface Passivation on Twin-Free GaAs Nanosheets

Unlike nanowires, GaAs nanosheets exhibit no twin defects, stacking faults, or dislocations even when grown on lattice mismatched substrates. As such, they are excellent candidates for optoelectronic applications, including LEDs and solar cells. We report substantial enhancements in the photoluminescence efficiency and the lifetime of passivated GaAs nanosheets produced using the selected area growth (SAG) method with metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD). Measurements are performed on individual GaAs nanosheets with and without an AlGaAs passivation layer. Both steady-state photoluminescence and time-resolved photoluminescence spectroscopy are performed to study the optoelectronic performance of these nanostructures. Our results show that AlGaAs passivation of GaAs nanosheets leads to a 30- to 40-fold enhancement in the photoluminescence intensity. The photoluminescence lifetime increases from less than 30 to 300 ps with passivation, indicating an order of magnitude improvement in the minority carrier lifetime. We attribute these enhancements to the reduction of nonradiative recombination due to the compensation of surface states after passivation. The surface recombination velocity decreases from an initial value of 2.5 × 10(5) to 2.7 × 10(4) cm/s with passivation.

Carrier dynamics and doping profiles in GaAs nanosheets

We have recently demonstrated that GaAs nanosheets can be grown by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD). Here, we investigate these nanosheets by secondary electron scanning electron microscopy (SE-SEM) and electron beam induced current (EBIC) imaging. An abrupt boundary is observed between an initial growth region and an overgrowth region in the nanosheets. The SE-SEM contrast between these two regions is attributed to the inversion of doping at the boundary. EBIC mapping reveals a p-n junction formed along the boundary between these two regions. Rectifying I–V behavior is observed across the boundary further indicating the formation of a p-n junction. The electron concentration (ND) of the initial growth region is around 1 × 1018 cm−3, as determined by both Hall effect measurements and low temperature photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy. Based on the EBIC data, the minority carrier diffusion length of the nanosheets is 177 nm, which is substantially longer than the corresponding length in unpassivated GaAs nanowires measured previously.

Formation of Fabry-Perot cavity in one-dimensional and two-dimensional GaAs nanostructures

We report formation of an optical cavity and observation of Fabry-Perot resonance in GaAs nanowires and nanosheets grown by metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) with selective area growth (SAG). These nanostructures are grown along the (111)B direction. The formation of an optical cavity in the nanowires and nanosheets are fundamentally different from each other. In nanowires the optical cavity is formed along the length of the nanowire with ends of the nanowire behaving as two parallel mirrors. In nanosheets, however, the three non-parallel edges of the GaAs nanosheets are involved in trapping of the light through total internal reflection, thus forming a 2D cavity. We show that through surface passivation and local field enhancement, both the photoluminescence intensity and hence Fabry-Perot peak intensity increases significantly. Transferring the GaAs nanowires and nanosheets to the gold substrate (instead of Si/SiO2 substrate) leads to substantial enhancement in the photoluminescence intensity by 5X (for nanowires) and 3.7X (for nanosheets) to infinite enhancement of the FP peaks intensities. In order to reduce the non-radiative recombination in these nanowires the surface states in the nanowires can be passivated by either an ionic liquid (EMIM-TFSI) or an AlGaAs surface layer. Both passivations methods lead to an enhancement of the optical response by up to 12X.

Optical and electrical characterization of surface passivated GaAs nanostructures

GaAs nanostructures are used in different optoelectronic applications including solar cells, LEDs and fast electronics. Although GaAs shows outstanding optical properties, it suffers from surface states and consequently high surface recombination velocity. The surface depletion effects lead to semi-insulating behaviors in GaAs devices. Passivation of GaAs nanostructures (AlGaAs or ionic liquid) lead to surface stability and improvement in optoelectronic properties. We provide a systematic study to compare the optical and electrical improvement after passivation (AlGaAs or ionic liquid) of GaAs nanostructure including nanowires and nanosheets. Both room temperature and low temperature photoluminescent (PL) spectra indicate increase in optical activity of GaAs nanostructures after passivation. Electron beam induced current (EBIC) measurements reveal the diffusion length of carries in different GaAs nanostructures.