100-period InGaAsP/InGaP superlattice solar cell with sub-bandgap quantum efficiency approaching 80%

Sayed, Islam E. H.; Jain, Nikhil; Steiner, Myles A.; Geisz, John F.; Bedair, S. M.

doi:10.1063/1.4993888

Title: 100-period InGaAsP/InGaP superlattice solar cell with sub-bandgap quantum efficiency approaching 80%

Journal Article · Fri Aug 25 00:00:00 EDT 2017 · Applied Physics Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4993888· OSTI ID:1393377

Sayed, Islam E. H. ^[1]; Jain, Nikhil ^[2]; Steiner, Myles A. ^[2]; Geisz, John F. ^[2]; Bedair, S. M. ^[3]

North Carolina State Univ., Raleigh, NC (United States); National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
North Carolina State Univ., Raleigh, NC (United States)

Here, InGaAsP/InGaP quantum well (QW) structures are promising materials for next generation photovoltaic devices because of their tunable bandgap (1.50-1.80 eV) and being aluminum-free. However, the strain-balance limitations have previously limited light absorption in the QW region and constrained the external quantum efficiency (EQE) values beyond the In_0.49Ga_0.51P band-edge to less than 25%. In this work, we show that implementing a hundred period lattice matched InGaAsP/InGaP superlattice solar cell with more than 65% absorbing InGaAsP well resulted in more than 2x improvement in EQE values than previously reported strain balanced approaches. In addition, processing the devices with a rear optical reflector resulted in strong Fabry-Perot resonance oscillations and the EQE values were highly improved in the vicinity of these peaks, resulting in a short circuit current improvement of 10% relative to devices with a rear optical filter. These enhancements have resulted in an InGaAsP/InGaP superlattice solar cell with improved peak sub-bandgap EQE values exceeding 75% at 700 nm, an improvement in the short circuit current of 26% relative to standard InGaP devices, and an enhanced bandgap-voltage offset (W_oc) of 0.4 V.

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Research Organization:: National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE)

Grant/Contract Number:: AC36-08GO28308

OSTI ID:: 1393377

Alternate ID(s):: OSTI ID: 1376975

Report Number(s):: NREL/JA-5J00-70132

Journal Information:: Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 111, Issue 8; ISSN 0003-6951

Publisher:: American Institute of Physics (AIP)Copyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Cited by: 14 works

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Title: 100-period InGaAsP/InGaP superlattice solar cell with sub-bandgap quantum efficiency approaching 80%

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