Strain balanced double quantum well tunnel junctions

Quantum well tunnel junctions have been shown to improve the performance of tunnel junctions within a concentrator solar cell with low absorption loss. In this work, we have demonstrated a strain balanced quantum well which may be used to incorporate materials within the tunnel junction which have more desirable bandgaps without any degradation in material properties. Our strained InAlAs/InGaAs QWTJ strain balanced to an InP substrate shows dramatically improved performance improvement over the baseline device in peak tunneling current and a 45,000x improvement in differential resistance.