Wide band gap Gallium Phosphide solar cells for multi-junction solar cell system

Author

Lu, Xuesong ; Huang, Susan R. ; Diaz, Martin ; Opila, Robert L. ; Barnett, Allen

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Univ. of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA

fYear

2010

fDate

20-25 June 2010

Abstract

Gallium Phosphide (GaP) solar cells have been designed, fabricated, characterized and analyzed as candidates for the top junction solar cell in a multi-junction solar cell system. Liquid phase epitaxy (LPE) has been used as the growth method for the epitaxial layers. Open circuit voltage (Voc) of 1.535V has been achieved under one sun illumination from the outdoor test. Quantum efficiency (QE) measurements were used in characterizing our solar cell devices. The QE analysis results show that the high front surface recombination velocity and the low diffusion length in the n-type epi-layer region are the two major limitations for the low Voc and short circuit current density (Jsc). An improved structure has been designed based on our current experimental results.

Keywords

gallium compounds; semiconductor epitaxial layers; solar cells; GaP; LPE; liquid phase epitaxial layers; multijunction solar cell system; open circuit voltage; quantum efficiency measurement; solar cell devices; wide band gap gallium phosphide solar cells; Gallium Phosphide; Liquid Phase Epitaxy; Quantum Efficiency; SEM;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Photovoltaic Specialists Conference (PVSC), 2010 35th IEEE

Conference_Location

Honolulu, HI

ISSN

0160-8371

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-5890-5

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/PVSC.2010.5616636

Filename

5616636