Room-temperature wafer bonded InGaP/GaAs//InGaAsP/InGaAs four-junction solar cell grown by all-solid state molecular beam epitaxy

Abstract

An InGaP/GaAs tandem cell on a GaAs substrate and an InGaAsP/InGaAs tandem cell on an InP substrate were grown separately by all-solid-state molecular beam epitaxy. A room-temperature direct wafer-bonding technique was used to integrate these subcells into an InGaP/GaAs//InGaAsP/InGaAs wafer-bonded solar cell, which resulted in an abrupt interface with low resistance and high optical transmission. The current-matching design for the base layer thickness of each cell was investigated. The resulting efficiency of the four-junction solar cell was 42.0% at 230 suns, which demonstrates the great potential of the room-temperature wafer-bonding technique to achieve high conversion efficiency for cells with four or more junctions.