Enhancement of open circuit voltage in InGaAsP-inverted thin-film solar cells grown by solid-source molecular beam epitaxy

Because InGaAsP alloys grown on InP substrates with 1.05 eV bandgap are often susceptible to compositional fluctuations owing to spinodal-like decomposition due to the miscibility gap, the corresponding open circuit voltage (VOC) for InGaAsP solar cells is typically smaller than the empirically expected value. In this study, we investigate the impact of the device structure on the VOC of In0.83Ga0.17As0.36P0.64 solar cells grown by solid-source molecular beam epitaxy. In comparison to the upright homojunction cell as a baseline, a reverse saturation current density (J0) for the upright heterojunction cell was effectively reduced from 3.2×10−4 to 1.5×10−6 mA/cm2 using the n-InP emitter with higher electron mobility, resulting in an enhancement of VOC from 0.557 to 0.568 V. Owing to the reduction of J0 to 2.8×10−7 mA/cm2, the VOC was further enhanced to 0.590 V for the inverted heterojunction cell. For the reduction of J0, a longer radiative lifetime of 20.2 ns obtained for the inverted heterojunction cell by photoluminescence decay at room temperature, presumably caused by light trapping, was responsible. Consequently, the efficiency was enhanced from 9.5% for the upright homojunction cell to 12.1% for the inverted heterojunction cell. Using the inverted InGaAsP cell, we demonstrated the mechanically stacked InGaP/GaAs//inverted-InGaAsP (// denotes the bonded interface) triple-junction solar cells with enhanced VOC of 2.64 V.