Zeng Xulu

Influence of GaInP ordering on the performance of GaInP solar cells

CuPt-type ordering with undesirable properties always occurs in GaInP at growth conditions that are very close to those leading to the highest quality material in metal organic chemical vapor deposition. In this work, highly disordered GaInP with high crystalline quality was obtained by optimizing growth conditions. Room temperature and low-temperature photoluminescence (PL) spectra of AlGaInP/GaInP/AlGaInP double heterostructures (DHs) reveal that the band edge emission intensity is enhanced by optimizing growth temperature, V/III ratio, and reactor pressure at the expense of low energy peak originating from spatially indirect recombination due to the ordering-related defects. The DH sample with less ordering-related defects demonstrates a longer effective minority carrier lifetime, consequently, the GaInP solar cell shows a significant improvement in the performance.

InGaAsP/InGaAs tandem photovoltaic devices for four-junction solar cells*

Lattice-matched InGaAs(P) photovoltaic devices were grown on InP substrates by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition. InGaAsP/InGaAs (1.07/0.74 eV) dual-junction (DJ) solar cells were fabricated and characterized by quantum efficiency and I–V measurements. The open circuit voltage, short circuit current density, fill factor, and efficiency of InGaAsP/InGaAs DJ solar cell are 0.977 V, 10.2 mA/cm2, 80.8%, and 8.94%, respectively, under one sun illumination of the AM 1.5D spectrum. For the InGaAsP/InGaAs DJ solar cell, with increasing concentration, the conversion efficiency first increases steadily and reaches 13% around 280 suns, and finally decreases due to the drop in fill factor at higher concentration ratios. These experimental results demonstrate the promising prospect of GaInP/GaAs/InGaAsP/InGaAs four-junction solar cells.