Abstract

We have investigated the performance of 10-layer stacked GaSb/GaAs quantum dot (QD) and quantum ring (QR) solar cells (SCs) having a type-II band alignment. For both SCs, the external quantum efficiency (EQE) increased in the longer wavelength region beyond GaAs bandedge wavelength of λ > 870 nm due to an additive contribution from GaSb/GaAs QD or QR layers inserted in the intrinsic region of p-i-n SC structure. The EQE of GaSb/GaAs QRSC was higher than that of QDSC at room temperature and the photoluminescence intensity from GaSb/GaAs QRs was stronger compared with GaSb/GaAs QDs. These results indicate that crystal quality of GaSb/GaAs QRs is superior to that of GaSb/GaAs QDs. Furthermore, a photocurrent production due to two-step photo-absorption via GaSb/GaAs QD states or QR states, ΔEQE was measured at low temperature and the ratio of two-step absorption to total carrier extraction defined as ΔEQE / (ΔEQE + EQE), was higher for GaSb/GaAs QRSC than that of QDSC. The ratio of GaSb/GaAs QRSC exceeds 80% over the wavelength region of λ = 950 - 1250 nm. This suggests that two-step absorption process is more dominant for carrier extraction from GaSb/GaAs QR structure.

Highlights

  • Intermediate band solar cells (IBSCs) that utilize the photo-absorption by sub-bandgap photons have attracted significant attention as one of the means to achieve the high conversion efficiency exceeding the Shockley-Queisser limit.[1]

  • The PL intensity attributed to GaSb quantum ring (QR) was stronger compared with GaSb quantum dot (QD)

  • These results indicate that nonradiative recombination losses are decreased by forming QR structure

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Summary

Introduction

Intermediate band solar cells (IBSCs) that utilize the photo-absorption by sub-bandgap photons have attracted significant attention as one of the means to achieve the high conversion efficiency exceeding the Shockley-Queisser limit.[1]. There have been several studies on IB materials such as highly mismatched with using dilute nitride semiconductors,[3,4] and multi-stacked quantum nanostructures (QNs)[1,5,6,7,8,9,10] for application to IBSCs. Extensive efforts have been put into demonstrating IBSCs using III-V semiconductor QDs. In particular, investigations were centered on multi-stacked In(Ga)As/GaAs QDs grown on GaAs substrate. Investigations were centered on multi-stacked In(Ga)As/GaAs QDs grown on GaAs substrate In this material system grown on GaAs (001) substrate, a stacked structure of 400 QD layers while keeping high crystal quality has been reported.[9] Further, InGaAs QD structures grown on high-index GaAs(311)B substrate exhibit a spatially ordered in-plane structure with a six-fold symmetry.[10,11] for In(Ga)As/GaAs system, the lifetime of generated carriers within QD layers is relatively short, because of the type-I band alignment between InGaAs QD and GaAs barrier layers

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