Investigation of III-V GaP solar cell on silicon substrate

Abstract

The best solar conversion efficiencies have been reached thanks to multijunction solar based on III-V semiconductors on GaAs or Ge substrates. While displaying high conversion efficiencies, these solar cells suffer from the high cost of such substrates. To benefit from both the low cost and technological maturity of silicon cells, III-V tandem cells on silicon seem a good compromise to overpass the theoretical efficiency limit of the Si single cells. To study the GaP/Si interface effect on the solar cell characteristic, a GaP n-i-p solar cell has been grown on silicon substrate. Two types of electrical contacts configurations have been processed: a top-top configuration in which the current does not see the GaP/Si interface and the top-bottom configuration where the electric current crosses the interface. A comparison of dark I-V, I-V under solar illumination, and EQE measurements on both configurations is performed. The top-bottom contacts configuration shows an EQE a little bit lower than the top-top contact one, likely due to lower carrier diffusion length or recombination at the lower interface. However, the result on the EQE of the top-bottom configuration is encouraging for the future development of the GaP-based/Si tandem solar cells, and any other tandem cell on silicon using GaP as an intermediate selective contact.