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Evaluating the effect of dislocation on the photovoltaic performance of metamorphic tandem solar cells

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Abstract

The photovoltaic conversion efficiency for monolithic GaInP/GaInAs/Ge triple-junction cell with various bandgap combination (300 suns, AM1.5d) was theoretically calculated. An impressive improvement on conversion efficiency was observed for a bandgap combination of 1.708, 1.194, and 0.67 eV. A theoretical investigation was carried out on the effect of dislocation on the metamorphic structure’s efficiency by regarding dislocation as minority-carrier recombination center. The results showed that only when dislocation density was less than 1.6×106 cm−2, can this metamorphic combination exhibit its efficiency advantage over the fully-matched combination. In addition, we also briefly evaluated the lattice misfit dependence of the dislocation density for a group of metamorphic triple-junction system, and used it as guidance for the choice of the proper cell structure.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Semiconductor Materials Science, Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.O. Box 912, Beijing, 100083, China

    Han Zhang, Yu Wang, XingWang Zhang, ZhiGang Yin, HuiWei Shi, YanSuo Wang, TianMao Huang & Zhen Fu

  2. School of Renewable Energy Engineering, North China Electric Power University, Beijing, 102206, China

    NuoFu Chen & YiMing Bai

  3. State Key Laboratory of Silicon Materials, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310027, China

    NuoFu Chen

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  1. Han Zhang
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  2. NuoFu Chen
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  3. Yu Wang
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  4. XingWang Zhang
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  5. ZhiGang Yin
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  10. Zhen Fu
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Correspondence to Han Zhang or NuoFu Chen.

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Zhang, H., Chen, N., Wang, Y. et al. Evaluating the effect of dislocation on the photovoltaic performance of metamorphic tandem solar cells. Sci. China Technol. Sci. 53, 2569–2574 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11431-010-4015-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11431-010-4015-3

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