New Materials for Future Generations of III-V Solar Cells

Three- and four-junction III-V devices are proposed for ultrahigh-efficiency solar cells using a new 1-eV material lattice-matched to GaAs, namely, GaInNAs. We demonstrate working prototypes of a GaInNAs-based solar cell lattice-matched to GaAs with photoresponse down to 1 eV. Under the AM1.5 direct spectrum with all the light higher in energy than the GaAs band gap filtered out, the prototypesgrown with base doping of about 1017 cm-3 have open-circuit voltages ranging from 0.35 to 0.44 V, short-circuit current densities of 1.8 mA/cm2, and fill factors from 61% to 66%. To improve on the current record-efficiency tandem GaInP/GaAs solar cell by adding a GaInNAs junction, the short-circuit current density of this 1-eV cell must be significantly increased. Because these low short-circuitcurrent densities are due to short diffusion lengths, we have demonstrated a depletion-width-enhanced variation of one of the prototype devices that trades off decreased voltage for increased photocurrent, with a short-circuit current density of 7.4 mA/cm2 and an open-circuit voltage of 0.28 V.