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Carrier-selective contact GaP/Si solar cells grown by molecular beam epitaxy

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Abstract

Integration of the III–V material systems on Si is an enabling technology for achieving high efficiency heterojunction Si-based photovoltaic devices. Gallium phosphide (GaP) offers numerous potential electrical, optical, and material advantages over amorphous silicon (a-Si) for the realization of several heterojunction solar cell designs. In this paper, details are given for the growth, fabrication, and characterization of different n-GaP/n-Si heterojunction solar cells to explore the effect of GaP as a carrier-selective contact. The cell performance is promising with high Si bulk lifetime (∼2.2 ms at the injection level of 1015 cm−3) and an open-circuit voltage of 618 mV and an efficiency of 13.1% in this new solar cell design. In addition to GaP as an electron-selective contact, MoOx was successfully implemented as a hole-selective contact in the n-GaP/n-Si heterojunction solar cell, increasing efficiency to 14.1% by improving the short wavelength response. The Si bulk lifetime is maintained during growth of GaP on Si by two different approaches and their effects on GaP/Si solar cell performance are also presented.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors would like to thank L. Ding and M. Boccard for their contributions in processing and testing of the solar cells in this study. The authors acknowledge funding from the U.S. Department of Energy under contract DE-EE0006335 and the Engineering Research Center Program of the National Science Foundation and the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy of the Department of Energy under NSF Cooperative Agreement No. EEC-1041895.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, 85287, USA

    Chaomin Zhang, Ehsan Vadiee, Richard R. King & Christiana B. Honsberg

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  1. Chaomin Zhang
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  2. Ehsan Vadiee
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  4. Christiana B. Honsberg
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Correspondence to Chaomin Zhang.

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Zhang, C., Vadiee, E., King, R.R. et al. Carrier-selective contact GaP/Si solar cells grown by molecular beam epitaxy. Journal of Materials Research 33, 414–423 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2018.14

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