II-VI Material Integration With Silicon for Detector and PV Applications

Heteroepitaxial growth of high-quality II-VI-alloy materials on Si substrates is a well-established commercial growth process for infrared (IR) detector devices. However, it has only recently been recognized that these same processes may have important applications for production of high-efficiency photovoltaic devices. This submission reviews the process developments that have enabled effective heteroepitaxy of II-VI alloy materials on lattice-mismatched Si for IR detectors as a foundation to describe recent efforts to apply these insights to the fabrication of multijunction Si/CdZnTe devices with ultimate conversion efficiencies >40%. Reviewed photovoltaic studies include multijunction Si/CdZnTe devices with conversion efficiency of ∼17%, analysis of structural and optoelectrical quality of undoped CdTe epilayer films on Si, and the effect that a Te-rich growth environment has on the structural and optoelectronic quality of both undoped and As-doped heteroepitaxial CdTe.