Growth and characterization of germanium carbide films for hot carrier solar cell absorber

The Hot carrier (HC) solar cell is a promising third generation photovoltaic device with potentially very high efficiency. It aims to tackle the major loss in conventional solar cells by collecting carriers with energies above the band gap (“hot” carriers) before they thermalise. This demands an absorber with a sufficiently slow carrier cooling rate to allow collection of these carriers. In this work, GeC has been investigated as a potential HC absorber material. GeC films have been deposited by RF magnetron sputtering at different temperature and using different targets. Preliminary measurements show the formation of GeC, consistent with previous observations.