Investigation of InAlGaAs / InGaAs quantum well solar cells

An investigating into InAlGaAs/InGaAs quantum well solar cells (QWSCs) is presented. The QWSCs consisted of sixteen layers of 5 nm InGaAs QWs / 10 nm InAlGaAs barriers were embedded into the i-region of a 1.0 eV InAlGaAs solar cell, and the EQE results were compared to a 1.0 eV InAlGaAs control solar cell. We also report the results of a unique infrared illumination experiment in which the electric field is probed and compared to the theoretical electric field at varying locations within the intrinsic region. We then evaluate 3 MeV proton irradiation of the devices. Due to the specific design of the stuctures in this study, QW devices were found to be less radiation tolerant than the control InAlGaAs devices. In addition, 2 samples with varying barrier thicknesses are compared to extract information regarding the escape mechanisms of carriers in these QWs.