Title :
Simulation of dilute nitride GaInNAs doping superlattice solar cells
Author :
Royall, B. ; Balkan, N.
Author_Institution :
Sch. of Comput. Sci. & Electron. Eng., Univ. of Essex, Colchester, UK
Abstract :
The authors simulate both conventional and doping superlattice GaInNAs solar cells. They show that for a conventional cell with 1 m diffusion lengths the maximum possible efficiency is approximately 9.5 and for 0.1 m diffusion lengths it is 6.5 as the device must be relatively thin. Doping superlattice structures with varying number of layers and different layer thicknesses are simulated to find the design which yields the highest efficiency. A high number of thin layers allow a high percentage of incident photons to be absorbed, and carrier separated increasing the short-circuit currents leading to efficiencies close to 12.
Keywords :
III-V semiconductors; diffusion; gallium compounds; indium compounds; semiconductor doping; solar cells; superlattices; GaInNAs; diffusion lengths; dilute nitride doping; incident photons; short circuit currents; superlattice solar cells;
Journal_Title :
Optoelectronics, IET
DOI :
10.1049/iet-opt.2009.0035