1.7eV Al0.2Ga0.8As solar cells epitaxially grown on silicon by SSMBE using a superlattice and dislocation filters

Abstract

Lattice-mismatched 1.7eV Al 0.2 Ga 0.8 As photovoltaic solar cells have been monolithically grown on Si substrates using Solid Source Molecular Beam Epitaxy (SSMBE). As a consequence of the 4%-lattice-mismatch, threading dislocations (TDs) nucleate at the interface between the Si substrate and III-V epilayers and propagate to the active regions of the cell. There they act as recombination centers and degrade the performances of the cell. In our case, direct AlAs/GaAs superlattice growth coupled with InAlAs/AlAs strained layer superlattice (SLS) dislocation filter layers (DFLSs) have been used to reduce the TD density from 1×10 9 cm -2 to 1(±0.2)×10 7 cm -2 . Lattice-matched Al0.2Ga0.8As cells have also been grown on GaAs as a reference. The best cell grown on silicon exhibits a Voc of 964mV, compared with a V oc of 1128mV on GaAs. Fill factors of respectively 77.6% and 80.2% have been calculated. Due to the lack of an anti-reflection coating and the non-optimized architecture of the devices, relatively low J sc have been measured: 7.30mA.cm -2 on Si and 6.74mA.cm -2 on GaAs. The difference in short-circuit currents is believed to be caused by a difference of thickness between the samples due to discrepancies in the calibration of the MBE prior to each growth. The bandgap-voltage offset of the cells, defined as E g /q-V oc , is relatively high on both substrates with 736mV measured on Si versus 572mV on GaAs. The non-negligible TD density partly explains this result on Si. On GaAs, non-ideal growth conditions are possibly responsible for these suboptimal performances.