The reliability study of III–V solar cell with copper based contacts

•Copper based contacts as low-cost metallurgy option for solar cells.•Cu-based contact on n-type GaAs and on p-type Ge is studied.•Reliability of III–V solar cell with Cu based contacts is demonstrated in this paper.

The reliability of III–V solar cell with copper based contacts as low-cost metallurgy option for solar cells including Cu-based Cu/Ge/Pd contact on n-type GaAs and Cu/Pt/Ti/Pt contact on p-type Ge is studied in this paper. The Cu-based contacts have low specific contact resistances of the order of 10−6 Ω cm2. The solar cells with the proposed Cu-based structures were subjected to high-temperature annealing (250 °C) and a high DC current (6.5 × 10−4 mA/μm2) stress test. Overall, the solar cell adopting these Cu based contacts remained quite stable and demonstrated excellent performances after these reliability tests.