An approach toward 25-percent efficient GaAs heteroface solar cells

To approach one-sun 25% efficiency in GaAs solar cells, it is necessary to improve the basic understanding of internal loss mechanisms by a combination of characterization techniques and computer models. A methodology is developed to measure and evaluate minority-carrier transport properties such as lifetime and recombination velocity throughout the device structure in a 21.2% GaAs cell. It is found that this cell has a recombination velocity of 1.25×10⁵ cm/s at the AlGaAs/GaAs interface and a base minority-carrier lifetime of 8 ns. Guidelines are provided to increase the efficiency of this cell to 24% with slightly increased surface passivation and base lifetime using effective recombination velocity and device modeling computer programs. Further device modeling is performed to show that efficiencies of 25% can be obtained using a modified heteroface structure with a moderate surface recombination and their relation to device design are fully understood