Growth of GaSb and GaInAsSb layers for thermophotovoltaic cells by liquid phase epitaxy

Abstract

GaSb based cells as receivers in thermophotovoltaic system have attracted great interest and been extensively studied in the recent 15 years. Although nowadays the manufacturing technologies have made a great progress, there are still some details need to make a further study. In this paper, undoped and doped GaSb layers were grown on n-GaSb (100) substrates from both Ga-rich and Sb-rich solutions using liquid phase epitaxy (LPE) technique. The nominal segregation coefficients k of intentional doped Zn were 1.4 and 8.8 determined from the two kinds of GaSb epitaxial layers. Additionally, compared with growing from Ga-rich solutions, the growing processes from Sb-rich solutions were much easier to control and the surface morphologies of epitaxial layers were smoother. Furthermore, in order to broaden the absorbing edge, Ga 1-x In x As y Sb 1-y quaternary alloys were grown on both GaSb and InAs substrates from In-rich solutions, under different temperature respectively.